rdesktop - Remote Desktop Protocol client
rdesktop [options] server[:port]
rdesktop(1) General Commands Manual rdesktop(1)
NAME
rdesktop - Remote Desktop Protocol client
SYNOPSIS
rdesktop [options] server[:port]
DESCRIPTION
rdesktop is a client for Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), used in a num-
ber of Microsoft products. It is known to work with Microsoft Windows
server versions ranging from NT 4 terminal server to Windows Server
2012 R2.
OPTIONS
-u <username>
Username for authentication on the server.
-d <domain>
Domain for authentication.
-s <shell>
Startup shell for the user - starts a specific application
instead of Explore. If SeamlessRDP is enabled this is the
application which is started in seamless mode.
-c <directory>
The initial working directory for the user. Often used in com-
bination with -s to set up a fixed login environment.
-p <password>
The password to authenticate with. Note that this may have no
effect if "Always prompt for password" is enabled on the server.
WARNING: if you specify a password on the command line it may be
visible to other users when they use tools like ps. Use -p - to
make rdesktop request a password at startup (from standard
input).
-n <hostname>
Client hostname. Normally rdesktop automatically obtains the
hostname of the client.
-k <keyboard-map>
Keyboard layout to emulate. This requires a corresponding
keymap file to be installed. The standard keymaps provided with
rdesktop follow the RFC1766 naming scheme: a language code fol-
lowed by a country code if necessary - e.g. en-us, en-gb, de,
fr, sv, etc.
The default keyboard map depends on the current locale (LC_* and
LANG environment variables). If the current locale is unknown,
the default keyboard map is en-us (a US English keyboard).
The keyboard maps are file names, which means that they are case
sensitive. The standard keymaps are all in lowercase.
The keyboard maps are searched relative to the directories
$HOME/.rdesktop/keymaps, KEYMAP_PATH (specified at build time),
and $CWD/keymaps, in this order. The keyboard-map argument can
also be an absolute filename.
The special value `none' can be used instead of a keyboard map.
In this case, rdesktop will guess the scancodes from the X11
event key codes using an internal mapping method. This method
only supports the basic alphanumeric keys and may not work prop-
erly on all platforms so its use is discouraged.
-g <geometry>
Desktop geometry (WxH[@DPI][+X[+Y]]). If geometry is the special
word "workarea", the geometry will be fetched from the extended
window manager hints property _NET_WORKAREA, from the root win-
dow. The geometry can also be specified as a percentage of the
whole screen, e.g. "-g 80%", "-g 80%x70%".
If the specified geometry depends on the screen size, and the
screen size is changed, rdesktop will automatically reconnect
using the new screen size. This requires that rdesktop has been
compiled with RandR support.
The optional DPI parameter should be specified if the screen
rdesktop is being displayed on is too far from 96 DPI for
unscaled Windows to be readable. Windows currently accepts val-
ues from 96 to 480.
Offset placement of window is optional. Starting point is upper
left corner of screen. Window manager might push into visible
area, if a panel would be covered. The schema is "-g
<value>+<xoff>+<yoff>, f.e. "-g 30%+200+600".
-i Use password as smartcard pin. If a valid user certificate is
matched in smart card reader the password passed with p argument
is used as pin for the smart card. This feature also requires
that smart card redirection is used using r scard argument.
-f Enable fullscreen mode. This overrides the window manager and
causes the rdesktop window to fully cover the current screen.
Fullscreen mode can be toggled at any time using Ctrl-Alt-Enter.
-b Force the server to send screen updates as bitmaps rather than
using higher-level drawing operations.
-t Disable use of remote control. This will disable features like
seamless connection sharing.
-A <seamlessrdpshell>
Enable SeamlessRDP by specifying the path to seamless rdp shell.
In this mode, rdesktop creates a X11 window for each window on
the server side. This mode requires the SeamlessRDP server side
component, which is available from http://www.cendio.com/seam-
lessrdp/.
When using this option, you should normally specify a startup
shell which launches the desired application through Seamless-
RDP.
Example: rdesktop -A 'c:\seamlessrdp\seamlessrdpshell.exe' -s
'notepad' mywts.domain.com
Any subsequential call to the above command line example will
make use of the seamless connection sharing feature which spawns
another notepad in the current connection to the specified
server and then exit.
-V <tls version>
Set the Transport Level Security (also known as SSL) Version
used. Should be one of the following values: 1.0, 1.1, 1.2. By
default all versions are supported.
-B Use the BackingStore of the Xserver instead of the integrated
one in rdesktop.
-e Disable encryption. This option is only needed (and will only
work) if you have a French version of NT TSE.
-E Disable encryption from client to server. This sends an
encrypted login packet, but everything after this is unencrypted
(including interactive logins).
-m Do not send mouse motion events. This saves bandwidth, although
some Windows applications may rely on receiving mouse motion.
-M Use local X cursor inherited from window manager instead of
server cursor. This is mostly useful with -m, but is also useful
if the server is sending bogus mouse cursors.
-C Use private colourmap. This will improve colour accuracy on an
8-bit display, but rdesktop will appear in false colour when not
focused.
-D Hide window manager decorations, by using MWM hints.
-K Do not override window manager key bindings. By default rdesk-
top attempts to grab all keyboard input when it is in focus.
-S <button size>
Enable single application mode. This option can be used when
running a single, maximized application (via -s). When the mini-
mize button of the windows application is pressed, the rdesktop
window is minimized instead of the remote application. The maxi-
mize/restore button is disabled. For this to work, you must
specify the correct button size, in pixels. The special word
"standard" means 18 pixels.
-T <title>
Sets the window title. The title must be specified using an
UTF-8 string.
-N Enable numlock synchronization between the Xserver and the
remote RDP session. This is useful with applications that looks
at the numlock state, but might cause problems with some
Xservers like Xvnc.
-X <windowid>
Embed rdesktop-window in another window. The windowid is
expected to be decimal or hexadecimal (prefixed by 0x).
-a <bpp>
Sets the colour depth for the connection (8, 15, 16, 24 or 32).
More than 8 bpp are only supported when connecting to Windows XP
(up to 16 bpp) or newer. Note that the colour depth may also be
limited by the server configuration. The default value is the
depth of the root window.
-z Enable compression of the RDP datastream.
-x <experience>
Changes default bandwidth performance behaviour for RDP5. By
default only theming is enabled, and all other options are dis-
abled (corresponding to modem (56 Kbps)). Setting experience to
b[roadband] enables menu animations and full window dragging.
Setting experience to l[an] will also enable the desktop wallpa-
per. Setting experience to m[odem] disables all (including
themes). Experience can also be a hexadecimal number containing
the flags.
-P Enable caching of bitmaps to disk (persistent bitmap caching).
This generally improves performance (especially on low bandwidth
connections) and reduces network traffic at the cost of slightly
longer startup and some disk space. (10MB for 8-bit colour,
20MB for 15/16-bit colour, 30MB for 24-bit colour and 40MB for
32-bit colour sessions)
-r <device>
Enable redirection of the specified device on the client, such
that it appears on the server. Note that the allowed redirec-
tions may be restricted by the server configuration.
Following devices are currently supported:
-r comport:<comport>=<device>,...
Redirects serial devices on your client to the server. Note that
if you need to change any settings on the serial device(s), do
so with an appropriate tool before starting rdesktop. In most
OSes you would use stty. Bidirectional/Read support requires
Windows XP or newer. In Windows 2000 it will create a port, but
it's not seamless, most shell programs will not work with it.
-r disk:<sharename>=<path>,...
Redirects a path to the share \\tsclient\<sharename> on the
server (requires Windows XP or newer). The share name is limited
to 8 characters.
-r lptport:<lptport>=<device>,...
Redirects parallel devices on your client to the server. Bidi-
rectional/Read support requires Windows XP or newer. In Windows
2000 it will create a port, but it's not seamless, most shell
programs will not work with it.
-r printer:<printername>[=<driver>],...
Redirects a printer queue on the client to the server. The
<printername> is the name of the queue in your local system.
<driver> defaults to a simple PS-driver unless you specify one.
Keep in mind that you need a 100% match in the server environ-
ment, or the driver will fail. The first printer on the command
line will be set as your default printer.
-r sound:[local|off|remote]
Redirects sound generated on the server to the client. "remote"
only has any effect when you connect to the console with the -0
option. (Requires Windows XP or newer).
-r lspci
Activates the lspci channel, which allows the server to enumer-
ate the clients PCI devices. See the file lspci-channel.txt in
the documentation for more information.
-r scard[:<Scard Name>=<Alias Name>[;<Vendor Name>][,...]]
Enables redirection of one or more smart-cards. You can provide
static name binding between GNU/Linux and Windows. To do this
you can use optional parameters as described: <Scard Name> -
device name in GNU/Linux and UNIX environment, <Alias Name> -
device name shown in Windows environment <Vendor Name> -
optional device vendor name. For list of examples run rdesktop
without parameters.
-r clipboard:[off|PRIMARYCLIPBOARD|CLIPBOARD]
Enable clipboard redirection. 'PRIMARYCLIPBOARD' looks at both
PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD when sending data to server. 'CLIPBOARD'
looks at only 'CLIPBOARD'.
-0 Attach to the console of the server (requires Windows Server
2003 or newer).
-4 Use RDP version 4.
-5 Use RDP version 5 (default).
-v Enable verbose output
CredSSP Smartcard options
--sc-csp-name <name>
Specify the CSP (Crypto Service Provider) to use on the windows
side for the smartcard authentication. CSP is the driver for
your smartcard and it seems like this is required to be speci-
fied for CredSSP authentication. For Swedish NetID the following
CSP name is used; "Net iD - CSP".
--sc-container-name <name>
Specify the container name, usually this is the username for
default container and it seems like this is required to be spec-
ified for CredSSP authentication.
--sc-reader-name <name>
Specify the reader name to be used to prevent the pin code being
sent to wrong card if there are several readers.
--sc-card-name <name>
Specify the card name for example; "Telia EID IP5a".
EXIT VALUES
0 RDP session terminated normally
1 Administrator initiated disconnect (also returned for logoff by
Windows XP joined to a domain)
2 Administrator initiated logout
3 Server idle session time limit reached
4 Server active session time limit reached
5 The session was replaced
6 The server is out of memory
7 The server denied the connection
8 The server denied the connection for security reasons
9 The user cannot connect to the server due to insufficient access
privileges
10 The server does not accept saved user credentials and requires
that the user enter their credentials for each connection
11 Disconnect initiated by user
12 Logout initiated by user
16 Internal licensing error
17 No license server available
18 No valid license available
19 Invalid licensing message from client
20 The client license has been modified and does no longer match
the hardware ID
21 The client license is in an invalid format
22 Network error during licensing protocol
23 Licensing protocol was not completed
24 Incorrect client license encryption
25 Can't upgrade or renew license
26 The server is not licensed to accept remote connections
30 The target endpoint chosen by the broker could not be found
32 The target endpoint is disconnecting from the broker
34 Error occurred while being redirected by broker
35 Error while the endpoint VM was being awakened by the broker
36 Error while the endpoint VM was being started by the broker
37 The IP address of the endpoint VM could not be determined by the
broker
38 No available endpoints in the connection broker pool
39 Connection processing cancelled by the broker
40 The connection settings could not be validated by the broker
41 Timeout while the endpoint VM was being started by the broker
42 Session monitoring error while the endpoint VM was being started
by the broker
50 The server can only host Remote Applications
51 Update of session keys failed
52 Decryption or session key creation failed
53 Encryption failed
62 The local client window was closed
63 Some other, unknown error occurred
64 Command line usage error
69 A service or resource (such as memory) is unavailable
70 An internal software error has been detected
71 Operating system error
76 Protocol error or unable to connect to remote host.
LINKS
Main website of rdesktop
http://www.rdesktop.org/
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(7) for descriptions of the following attributes:
+---------------+---------------------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+---------------------------------+
|Availability | desktop/remote-desktop/rdesktop |
+---------------+---------------------------------+
|Stability | Pass-through volatile |
+---------------+---------------------------------+
NOTES
Source code for open source software components in Oracle Solaris can
be found at https://www.oracle.com/downloads/opensource/solaris-source-
code-downloads.html.
This software was built from source available at
https://github.com/oracle/solaris-userland. The original community
source was downloaded from https://github.com/rdesktop/rdesktop/ar-
chive/v1.9.0.tar.gz.
Further information about this software can be found on the open source
community website at http://www.rdesktop.org/.
2017-10-28 rdesktop(1)