[www.tuxx-home.at] - Website of Alexander Griesser

First official LXTC release in a few weeks

Alexander Griesser — 2008-08-08T21:04:07+02:00

I'm working hard to finally release LXTC to the public (internal version numbering is 1.9 for the next version, but it's still beta), so when that becomes available, I'll release it on http://lxtc.tuxx-home.at.
Thanks for all your questions to this software!

A small wrapper-like implementation of the Microsoft Terminal Services Client

Alexander Griesser — 2007-05-12T22:06:12+02:00

Today I wanted to add a nice little feature to my thinclients. They should from now on be able to read and interpret Microsoft Terminal Services configuration files (you know that funny .rdp files, do you?).

I know, that there are several tools out there that are able to read such files, like tsclient, but if you look at the `ldd` output for tsclient, you don't want to have such a beast on your thinclient:

tuxx@vi-edv003:~$ ldd $(which tsclient)
        linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xffffe000)
        libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0xb7c4a000)
        libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 (0xb7c34000)
        libgobject-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.so.0 (0xb7bf9000)
        libglib-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0xb7b66000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0xb7b4f000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0xb7a0c000)
        libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0xb798b000)
        libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 (0xb7983000)
        libpango-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpango-1.0.so.0 (0xb7945000)
        libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0xb7859000)
        libXfixes.so.3 => /usr/lib/libXfixes.so.3 (0xb7854000)
        libatk-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libatk-1.0.so.0 (0xb783a000)
        libgmodule-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so.0 (0xb7837000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0xb7833000)
        libcairo.so.2 => /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2 (0xb77be000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0xb7797000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7fb1000)
        libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 (0xb776c000)
        libXext.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXext.so.6 (0xb775e000)
        libXrender.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1 (0xb7756000)
        libXinerama.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXinerama.so.1 (0xb7752000)
        libXi.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXi.so.6 (0xb774a000)
        libXrandr.so.2 => /usr/lib/libXrandr.so.2 (0xb7744000)
        libXcursor.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXcursor.so.1 (0xb773b000)
        libpangoft2-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangoft2-1.0.so.0 (0xb7710000)
        libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6 (0xb76a5000)
        libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0xb7691000)
        libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXau.so.6 (0xb768e000)
        libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXdmcp.so.6 (0xb7689000)
        libpng12.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 (0xb7666000)
        libexpat.so.1 => /usr/lib/libexpat.so.1 (0xb7645000)
tuxx@vi-edv003:~$

Therefore, I came up with a little shell script that does the basic tricks. It is called "mstsc4l" and can be downloaded from the link below.

Currently, it has a few limitations, like:

# This is a wrapper script for the linux `rdesktop` command and
# is able to read .rdp files made with the Microsoft Terminal Services
# Client (mstsc)
#
# Currently, this version is far from being complete (I only implemented
# the most necessary variables) and it does not support reading from
# Unicode .rdp files, so please convert them to ASCII files first!
#
# mstsc4l, Version 0.1
# by Alexander Griesser 


If someone is willing to implement additional features, step forwards and mail me
the results, please.



Links:


  mstsc4l

Uploading binary files in bash cgi script

Alexander Griesser — 2006-04-25T14:29:04+02:00

Today I fixed the issue with my thinclients were I was unable to upload binary files (e.g. tar.gz) to my thinclient installation.

It's not very beautiful, but it works (I'm open for better solutions, so please send me e-mail if you know about a better solution to do this).

if [ "$REQUEST_METHOD" = "POST" ]; then
  TMPOUT=/tmp/fwupdate
  cat >$TMPOUT

  # Get the line count
  LINES=$(wc -l $TMPOUT | cut -d ' ' -f 1)

  # Remove the first four lines
  tail -$((LINES - 4)) $TMPOUT >$TMPOUT.1

  # Remove the last line
  head -$((LINES - 5)) $TMPOUT.1 >$TMPOUT

  # Copy everything but the new last line to a temporary file
  head -$((LINES - 6)) $TMPOUT >$TMPOUT.1

  # Copy the new last line but remove trailing \r\n
  tail -1 $TMPOUT | perl -p -i -e 's/\r\n$//' >>$TMPOUT.1
fi

This is necessary, because busybox's webserver (and maybe all others too) write four lines of content information at the beginning of the generated file and one line at the end as well as making a new line in the last line of the binary file causes the end of the last line to contain "\r\n" which is also subject to strip.

In my testings, I tried ten different binary files and always got the same md5sums after uploading, which means that this little shell script is likely to work.

Norton Ghost is not able to find a local disk on my thinclients

Alexander Griesser — 2006-04-20T14:43:44+02:00

When trying to populate my thinclient installation on my Thinclient PCs (VIA EPIA Mini-ITX diskless computers) Norton Ghost didn't find any valid source disks. This system in fact doesn't contain an IDE disk, but it contains a M-IDE cartridge directly plugged into the motherboard's primary IDE socket.

To get around this issue, you have to "Disable the Extended Int13h support" in Norton Ghost. This can be achieved with the following parameter:

ghost.exe -FNX

Afterwards, Norton Ghost recognizes the local M-IDE cartridge as ordinary IDE disk and you can continue imaging. Took me quite a while, to find this switch...