RDP ... just went headless...

[roamer_1]

Well, my lab looks like a tornado hit it.

I have been loathe to do it, but I pulled both my main desk and my test bench off the wall, and all the electrical guts and wires are now strewn across the desktops... 

It is such a mess, and I knew it would be. But, it'll be good when it's done. Extra lamps are getting wired in, and big sound is getting added to the desk, as well as a nice webcam and mike capability. Extra 110 plugs, a bigger switch... all the stuff that I haven't done because I really, really didn't want to move that desk.

The vital purpose that finally tipped the balance was the docking station for my new(er) laptop, but at the same time, removing KVM from my system. A buddy shipped me a more than adequate RDPWrapper, and I am confident enough that the boxen on my desk, and on my test bench are now all headless, except for one each, respectively.

I may leave a KVM on the test bench to toggle guest machines to the monitor, and the pre-stage bench, where all the scanning happens, will remain KVM, but my main boxes are now headless.

Which brings me to my question, or maybe observation... There are some niggling issues to consider wrt going rdp headless:

1.) I haven't found out how to shut a machine down via RDP, other than by cmdline. I am currently writing a little gizmo to provide shutdown/restart, and maybe logoff/switch_user (without dropping the rdp connection if possible), which I will pin in the start menu on each machine... But for now, I have to use VNC for that function. I would like to eliminate VNC, but I am finding it to be necessarily retained.

2.) I should have predicted it, but I cannot find a way to log in by rdp, where the user is not present in both machines. My media system 'user' is not in my business boxes, but my laptop is often used to access the desktop on the tv in order to read things I can't read naturally from my chair (be it the chair at the desk or the easy chair). Again, VNC to the rescue, or I have to put the media machine user into my business machines.

Sound and vid are far superior to vnc, but printer support in rdp seems to be hinky. I can get around this by printing to the network share, but it sure would be nice for it to work like it ought  (printing to default on the host machine).

RDP tends to not be able to WOL a machine that has gone to sleep - Right now I have power setting to always on, but again, VNC worked fine before.

Is there anything else I should watch for or be aware of? I have used RDP for a while, and understand it's general function - These are all issues that have reared themselves because I am committed to making the lion's share of the boxes headless. I am doing this. It is 2kewl not to. But it might save me a bit of coding to find better methods.

TIA

 

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Are these Windows machines? They do make RDP stuff for Linux.

I've shut down many a machine via RDP.

I've never understood the point of a homelab in the days of virtualization.

[roamer_1]

Are these Windows machines? They do make RDP stuff for Linux.

I have a Mint box DMZ'd that handles any incoming users from the net (http and ftp), But so far I haven't even bothered to address him. He's pretty divorced anyway, and my main access from the internal lan is to just shove files up into the thing via FTP, and the webpages therein are handled FTP just like if it were online.
 
But yes, Win boxes. Mostly 10 and 7, one Vista. All home.

I've shut down many a machine via RDP.

I do not see any way, other than to do it by cmdline. Note this is an RDP wrapper on home machines - You may be on pro boxes, where RDP is natural.

I've never understood the point of a homelab in the days of virtualization.

I fix residential and SOHO machines, with a big emphasis on virus, imaging, hdd recovery and file transfers. Big bandwidth local LAN copying. I don't know how to grind on a hard drive virtually. 

I do code too, but since I need the capability for physical systems anyway, the coding and testing is incidental.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

I have a Mint box DMZ'd that handles any incoming users from the net (http and ftp), But so far I haven't even bothered to address him. He's pretty divorced anyway, and my main access from the internal lan is to just shove files up into the thing via FTP, and the webpages therein are handled FTP just like if it were online.
 
But yes, Win boxes. Mostly 10 and 7, one Vista. All home.

I do not see any way, other than to do it by cmdline. Note this is an RDP wrapper on home machines - You may be on pro boxes, where RDP is natural.

Ah, this is true. We don't have any home OS's where I work, all professional and server OS. Totally different ballgame.

If I was used to the home version of Windows OS's, i'd probably have the same animus a lot of people have towards them.

I fix residential and SOHO machines, with a big emphasis on virus, imaging, hdd recovery and file transfers. Big bandwidth local LAN copying. I don't know how to grind on a hard drive virtually. 

I do code too, but since I need the capability for physical systems anyway, the coding and testing is incidental.

Grind on a hard drive? I use one of these:



 

[roamer_1]

If I was used to the home version of Windows OS's, i'd probably have the same animus a lot of people have towards them.

I like home, just fine, and I can generally make it run like a scalded dog. I used to lay in the weeds for pro keys, but I really haven't found much need for the upscale, present problems excepted... Between rdp and native virtualization, maybe it is worth another look 

Grind on a hard drive? I use one of these:

 

Always the wise guy, eh?

LOL!