HMGforum.com

Hi All,

I still testing a solution to my problem: Remote non Windows clients for HMG applications.

I've tested a second alternative to solve this: RDP.

RDP stands for Remote Desktop Protocol.

Any Windows machine can act as a RDP server and there is RDP clients for most popular OSs (Linux, IOS, Android, etc.).

To get it running is very simple and (as in the previous post) I'm sure that many of you already know:

1. Download and install VirtualBox (https://www.virtualbox.org/).

2. Create a new virtual machine from a Windows XP CD or ISO.

3. Once the virtual XP machine is working, configure it to allow remote desktop connections (Contro Panel->System). There is a lot of info in the web about how this must be configured.

4. You must reconfigure your network for XP virtual machine (bridge adapter/allow all) to make it work.

5. To test it you only must to start the remote desktop client bundled with the Windows VirtualBox host machine (you must connect to it using its ip address).

6. Finally, to the 'real world' test, you must have physical access to the target client machine to install and/or configure the remote desktop client on it.

Pros and Cons (comparing it with ThinVNC Server/HTML5 client):

Pros:

1. The user experience is better (looks really good).

2. It is faster.

3. Server devices (like printer) are automatically mapped to the client, so your application will use them in a transparent way.

4. You can configure clients to automatically start the session loading a server application (your application) leaving the user straight to the application, making the process easier and more secure.

Cons:

You must physically access to the client machine to install and/or configure remote desktop client on it (not always possible).


There is a third part of this article that I'm writing right now...

Hi Roberto.

I didn't understand why you use Virtual box.
If the hosting machine is "Windows" (from xp on) and it's not "home edition" you can do the same without "Viirtual Box".
The process is some more faster.
Just some tip more.
I tried (only with "windows" clients) also to use a "Vpn" (open vpn is very very good and is very very fast and is very very cheap ! ).
Some times you can do the vpn for a span of clients (usually not more than 5 clients concurrently) also using the modem/router.
One more thing I would like to suggest.
if the host machine is not a "server" (I mean "windows server") it can't allow more than one client connect at time.
There is an "overcome" that "patch" TCP.sys in windows kernel (not Ms. certified !!!) that works great allowing more clients to be connected simultaneously.
I hope some of this issues will be useful to you.
I would catch the occasion to tank you for your beautiful work. Thank again
Vieri Romagnoli

vierirom wrote:Hi Roberto.

I didn't understand why you use Virtual box.
If the hosting machine is "Windows" (from xp on) and it's not "home edition" you can do the same without "Viirtual Box".
The process is some more faster.
Just some tip more.
I tried (only with "windows" clients) also to use a "Vpn" (open vpn is very very good and is very very fast and is very very cheap ! ).
Some times you can do the vpn for a span of clients (usually not more than 5 clients concurrently) also using the modem/router.
One more thing I would like to suggest.
if the host machine is not a "server" (I mean "windows server") it can't allow more than one client connect at time.
There is an "overcome" that "patch" TCP.sys in windows kernel (not Ms. certified !!!) that works great allowing more clients to be connected simultaneously.
I hope some of this issues will be useful to you.
I would catch the occasion to tank you for your beautiful work. Thank again
Vieri Romagnoli

I've suggested the use of VirtualBox, to not 'loose' our machine when a remote user is connected.

In fact, you could have multiple virtual machines running at the same time to have multiple users connected.

I knew about the 'patch' to allow multiple clients on XP, but I could not recommend to use such thing to anyone