Remote Desktop alternative for Mac users

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I frequently connect to Windows hosts from my Mac and I have been using the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection client for Mac OS X. The trouble with this is that it only allows a single connection and it’s not a universal binary (it also has a tendency to crash on exit, requiring a forced quit). I use rdesktop on my Linux boxes, and figured it ought to be available for the Mac (it is, using fink, or by compiling from source) but I also came across CoRD (via Lifehacker) and TSclientX (via the comments on the Lifehacker post) – both of which seem to offer a much richer user experience:

  • CoRD allows multiple RDP connections as well as storing login credentials. It seems pretty responsive too.
  • TSclientX s essentially a GUI wrapper for rdesktop and therefore requires X11. That shouldn’t really be a problem but it does sometimes feel like a bit of a kludge – even so, it has the potential to be extremely useful as it supports SeamlessRDP. Unfortunately, SeamlessRDP requires additional software to be present on the remote Windows system and I couldn’t get it to work for me, possibly because I was connecting to a Windows XP machine (which only supports a single connection) and rdesktop creates a X11 window for each window on the server side.

At the moment, I’ve settled on CoRD, largely due to its ease of use but both clients seem to offer a great improvement over Microsoft’s RDP offering for Mac users.

Running Red Hat Enterprise Linux without a subscription

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I’ve written previously about why open source software is not really free (as in monetary value), just free (as in freedom). Companies such as Red Hat and Novell (SUSE) make their money from support and during Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) setup, it is “strongly recommended” that the system is set up for software updates via Red Hat Network (RHN), citing the benefits of an RHEL subscription as:

  • “Security and updates: receive the latest software updates, including security updates, keeping [a] Red Hat Enterprise Linux system updated and secure.
  • Downloads and upgrades: download installation images for Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases, including new releases.
  • Support: Access to the technical support experts at Red Hat or Red Hat’s partners for help with any issues you might encounter with [a] system.
  • Compliance: Stay in compliance with your subscription agreement and manage subscriptions for systems connected to [an] account at http://rhn.redhat.com/

You will not be able to take advantage of these subscriptions privileges without connecting [a] system to Red Hat Network.”

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 installer

Take a look at Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and you’ll see that it’s actually quite expensive – a standard subscription for a machine with up to 2 processor sockets including 1 year’s 12×5 telephone support, 1 year of web access and unlimited incidents is €773.19 [source: Red Hat Online Shop, Europe]. That is not something that I can afford and even though Red Hat gave me a copy of RHEL 5 as part of my recent training, it only includes a 30-day subscription. Now they have launched Red Hat Exchange – a new service whereby third party open source software solutions are purchased, delivered and supported via a single, standardized Red Hat subscription agreement with consolidated billing covering the complete application stack. It’s a great idea, but the pricing for some of the packages makes using proprietary alternatives seem quite competitive.

In fairness to Red Hat, they sponsor the Fedora Project for users like me, who could probably make do with a community-supported release (Fedora is free for anyone to use modify and distribute) but there is another option – CentOS (the community enterprise operating system), which claims to be:

“An Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendor[‘]s redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.) CentOS is free.”

Hmm… so which North American Enterprise Linux vendor might that be then ;-)

So what about RHEL systems for which the subscription has expired? I’m not sure what the legal standpoint is but there is a way to receive updated software using an unregistered copy of RHEL. Firstly, configuring additional repositories like Dag Wieer’s RPMForge – there are even RPMs available to set up the correct repository! Then, there are the various RPM search sites on the ‘net, including:

I’ve found that using these, even if there is not an appropriate RHEL or generic RPM available, there is often a CentOS RPM (which often still carries the el5 identifier in the filename). These should be safe to install on an RHEL system and in those rare cases when a bleeding edge package is required, there may well be a Fedora version that can be used. So it seems that I can continue to run a Linux distribution that is recognised by most software vendors, even when my RHN subscription expires.

Installing VMware Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Red Hat logo VMware logoLast year, I wrote about installing VMware Server on Fedora Core 6. At the time, I was using version 1.0.1 (build 29996) and tonight I needed to load the latest version 1.0.3 (build 44356) on my laptop, which is now running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5. In theory, installing on a popular enterprise distribution such as RHEL ought to be straightforward but even so there were some things to watch out for (some of which were present in my earlier post). The following steps should be enough to get VMware Server up and running:

  1. Download the latest VMware Server release and register for a serial number (i.e. give VMware lots of marketing information… everything but my inside leg measurement… and make a mental note that I mustn’t lose the serial number this time).
  2. Prepare the system, installing the following packages and dependencies:
    • gcc (v4.1.1-52.el5.i386)
      • glibc-devel (v2.5-12.i386):
        • glibc-headers (v2.5-12.i386).
      • libgomp = (v4.1.1-52.el5.i386).
    • kernel-devel (v2.6.18-8.el5.i686).
    • xinetd (v2.3.14-10.el5.i386).
  3. Install VMware Server (rpm -Uvh VMware-server-1.0.3-44356.i386.rpm).
  4. Configure VMware Server (/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl):
    • Display and accept the EULA, then accept defaults for installation of MIME type icons (/usr/share/icons), desktop menu entries (/usr/share/applications), application icon (/usr/share/pixmaps), allow the configuration to build the vmmon module (using /usr/bin/gcc), enable networking, enable NAT, probe for an unused private subnet, do not configure additional NAT subnets, enable host only subnets, robe for an unused private subnet, do not configure additional host-only subnets, port for connection (902) default location for virtual machine files (/var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines, creating if necessary) and finally, provide the serial number when requested.
      • All the prompts should work at their defaults; however it may be necessary to answer the question “What is the location of the directory of C header files that match your running kernel? [/usr/src/linux/include]” with /usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-8.el5-i686/include (or another version of the kernel-devel tools).
      • Building the vmmon module will fail if gcc is not present.
      • If the installer is being run under X, the serial number can be pasted into the terminal when requested.
    • The configuration script will have to be re-run if it finds that inetd or xinetd are not installed
  5. Extract the VMware management user interface from the archive (tar zxf VMware-mui-1.0.3-44356.tar.gz) and run the installation program (./vmware-mui-distrib/vmware-install.pl):
    • Display and accept the EULA, then accept defaults for installation of the binary files (/usr/bin), location of init directories (/etc/rc.d), location of init scripts (/etc/rc.d/init.d), installation location (/usr/lib/vmware-mui, creating if necessary), documentation location (/usr/lib/vmware-mui/doc, creating if necessary), allow vmware-install.pl to call /usr/bin/vmware-config-mui.pl and define the session timeout (default is 60 minutes).
  6. Extract the VMware Server console package from the client archive, or download it from the VMware management interface at https://servername:8333/ (it may be necessary to open a firewall port for TCP 8333 using system-config-securitylevel in order to allow remote connections).
  7. Install the VMware Server console (rpm -Uvh VMware-server-console-1.0.3-44356.i386.rpm).
  8. Run the vmware-config-server-console.pl script (not vmware-config-console.pl as stated in the documentation) – accept the EULA and if prompted, enter the port number for connection (default is 902).

At this point, you should have a working VMware Server installation accessible via the VMware Server Console icon on the Applications | System Tools menu, by using the vmware command from a terminal, or via a browser session. The final stage is to set up some virtual machine. I simply copied my previous image from an external hard disk to /var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines and then opened it in the console (from where I could update the VMware Tools) but the (Windows) VMware Converter utility is available for P2V/I2V/V2V migrations (replacing the VMware P2V Assistant) and preconfigured VMs can be obtained from the VMTN virtual appliance marketplace.