Think Thin: Thin Client and Server Based Computing Group Blog

I'm sure a lot of folks have asked themselves this question today.  

There are plenty of 3rd party RDP solutions for Solaris (examples here, here, and here), and there's the very popular open source RDP client, RDesktop.  We even bundled RDesktop on the Sun Ray Server Companion CD.  Let's not forget our acquisition of Tarantella which became Sun Secure Global Desktop.  So why go to all this trouble?

One reason was probably to get me to shut up.  I've been after anyone who'd listen that we need to build or buy our own RDP client forever.  As the capabilities of RDP increased, so did my pressure to make this happen.  But that's not a good answer, here are some better ones.

• Full compliance with the Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol 5.2:  This means smart cards, Windows Network Load Balancing Support, Terminal Server Session Directory Support.   You won't find another RDP client for Solaris out there with the complete RDP 5.2 feature set.
  
• Customers who don't want open source:  As much as we love open source here at Sun, there is a large number of customers who will not deploy open source software
• The legal question of RDesktop:  There's a lot of customers who were scared of Microsoft's reaction to them using RDesktop.  Though the legality has never been tested, these customers didn't want to be the first.   My opinion has always been if Microsoft gets their money, it shouldn't matter.  But a CIO of a Fortune 500 company has a lot more at risk and needs more assurance than my opinion (read indemnification).
• Point and Shoot Simplicity:  Sun Secure Global Desktop is a great product, but Windows access is only a small part of it.  For customers that just want simple point and shoot access to their Windows environment from their Sun Ray, the Sun Ray Connector for Windows is much simpler.
• Built by Sun:  It's no secret that the US Government and Military is one of Sun's largest customers.  They wanted Sun to provide the complete solution for their thin client of choice.
  
• Built to Microsoft's RDP Spec: Customers told us they want a solution that won't be rendered useless with a Microsoft Hot Fix or Service Pack.  They want a Microsoft Certified Solution.  That's what we are delivering.
  
• Performance:  This is built for Sun Ray from the Ground up.  First comes features, next comes performance.  Our goal is to make this the best RDP client for Sun Ray.  Not just for Solaris or for Linux, but for Sun Ray.
  

So give the Sun Ray Connector for Windows a spin.   Check back here for updates, known issues, etc.  I'll be blogging a lot about this in the months to come.  I kind of feel like this is my baby, even though I didn't write one line of code.

Have you ever wanted to have a quick little "Click Here to Start XYZ" type script?  If so this is for you.



A lot of my customers find this useful in Controlled Access Mode when they don't want the applications running all the time (i.e. consuming resources), but want to give the user something easier than right clicking on the workspace menu to launch.  It even has a little bit of logic in it to center itself on the screen.

It also works great for full screen Windows deployments in non-smart card mode which as most of you know will time out after 120 seconds of sitting at the Windows login screen.

When the user clicks one of the application buttons the chooser box will disappear (as long as your application doesn't fork), and then reappear once the application exits.  If it is configured as a Critical application, when the user clicks the Restart button, the Sun Ray will cycle.  Particularly useful when launching a web browser so all the cache of the last users session are cleared out.

There are two scripts that make this happen, utsplash and utmsgbox.

utsplash will be your CAM Application and it will call the utmsgbox script.

utsplash is the script you will edit and customize.  You can also customize the icon, which is a unix pixmap. 

Hint: use /usr/dt/bin/sdtimage to convert a gif or jpeg into xpm format.

Here's an example of the customizable parts of utsplash

NOTE: This is only a part of the script. A tarball of the complete script is provided here.

#!/bin/sh
PATH=$PATH:/usr/openwin/bin:.;export PATH
# TITLE - What you want the label Title to be
TITLE="Sun Ray...Powered by Sun"
#ICON - What icon to display
ICON=170.xpm
#Width of the Greeter
WIDTH=550
#Height of the Greeter
HEIGHT=200
#Background color
BACKGROUND=white
#Font color
FOREGROUND=black
# Text for the 1st button - otherwise APP1 will be displayed
BTN1="MS Windows"
# Text for the 2nd button - otherwise APP2 will be displayed
BTN2="Firefox"
# Text for the 3rd button - otherwise Restart will be displayed
BTN3="Restart"
#
#
# Get screen information to center the box
XWID=`/usr/openwin/bin/xwininfo -root|grep Width | awk -F: '{print $2}'|sed 's/ //'`
XHGT=`/usr/openwin/bin/xwininfo -root|grep Height | awk -F: '{print $2}' |sed 's/ //'`
XCTR=`expr $XWID / 2`
YCTR=`expr $XHGT / 2`
YCUT=`expr $HEIGHT / 2`
XCUT=`expr $WIDTH / 2`
GEOX1=`expr $XCUT - $XCTR`
GEOY1=`expr $YCUT - $YCTR`
GEOX=`echo $GEOX1 | sed 's/-//'`
GEOY=`echo $GEOY1 | sed 's/-//'`
#
# -- Define Messages ---
#Message to be displayed on first line of the greeter
MESSAGE1="Welcome to the Sun Ray Cafe"
#Message to be displayed on second line of greeter
MESSAGE2="Please select an application"
MSG=`printf "%s\n\n" "$MESSAGE1" "$MESSAGE2"`
#-- Applications to run when buttons pushed --
APP2RUN1="/opt/SUNWutWBT/WBTStart.rdesktop"
APP2RUN2="/opt/firefox/firefox"


Dowload the sample scripts here. As always, have fun with it.

In beta now, check it out.

Sun Ray Connector for Windows Beta