Let the Sunshine In: Software support engineer in Tokyo

While I was experimenting with x11vnc, I found an interesting page.

Remote Control Toolkit - Sun Ray User Group Wiki

I have never been a SunRay server administrator so I haven't downloaded it, yet. From the brochure, If I'm reading it correct, I found 2 interesting thing I want to know more about.

1. Easier remote access
2. Easier session recording

At Sun, many employees own lightweight SunRay laptop at home which has VPN built-in. I don't have one. So, when I need to 'hot desk' from home, I need to use x11vnc. I think this is something Remote Control Toolkit will help. But since I can't install this on corporate SunRay server, I wrote a small script to automate login.

I did this on Windows with Cygwin. I'm sure this is easier on Linux or Mac OS-X.

There are 4 things to prepare.

1. PuTTY: a free telnet/ssh client
   One can use ssh in Cygwin instead.
   
   
2. SunRay Solaris: run Synergy remotely via ssh - Let the Sunshine In
   If SunRay servers are clustered, one needs to know which specific server your session is on. I wrote a small script in this blog which retrieves the server name and port number and writes it to ~/.sunray file.
3. RealVNC
4. Save vncviewer config file as ~/.sunray.vnc. You may want to lower colors, for example, to save bandwidth.
   
   
   

#!/bin/bash
SUNRAY_USERNAME=mysunrayid

exec 3<&0
exec < ~/.sunray
read ACTIVE_HOST DISPLAY rest
exec 0<&3
exec 3<&-

plink -i d:/kinoue/misc/putty.ppk $SUNRAY_USERNAME@$ACTIVE_HOST \
  " \
   pkill -U \$USER screensaver; \
   pkill -U \$USER X11vnc; \
   DISPLAY=:$DISPLAY.0 ~/bin/X11vnc-0.8.3 -auth /home/$SUNRAY_USERNAME/.Xauthority -rfbauth /home/$SUNRAY_USERNAME/.vnc/passwd -rfbport 5900 -solid black -wait 8 -sb 16 -bg \
  " 2>&1 | tee /tmp/_x11vnc.log

sed -i "s/^\(Host=\).*/\1$(grep '^The VNC desktop is:' /tmp/_x11vnc.log | cut -c26-)/" ~/.sunray.vnc
/c/e/Program\ FilesW2K3/RealVNC/VNC4/vncviewer.exe -config $(cygpath -w ~/.sunray.vnc) &