Illustration
8: Setup Wizard - Setup is Complete
Client Connection Manager
WML Linux Thin Client User Guide
Illustration
8: Setup Wizard - Setup is Complete
The client connection manager runs every time the WML Linux Thin Client is powered up. It manages all of your connections and provides an interface for you to configure new connections. You can always return to the Connection Manager using the key combination Ctrl-Alt-End (except when initially running the Setup Wizard).
Illustration
9: A new, empty Connection Manager
The connection manager manages the windows of
each running connection and allows you to switch between the windows
using the key combination Ctrl-Alt-Down.
There are a variety of ways to connect to a local or remote server, WML recommend using No Machine NX. No Machine is a very cost effective and reliable method, it will allow multiple full graphic sessions to any machine that has the inexpensive No Machine server software loaded. With No Machine NX you can also run a low performance session to a remote server using a dial up modem, although this would be slow in terms of response times.
The connection manager also allows you to configure Citrix ICA, RDP, VNC, SSH, telnet, www and XDMCP connections. The setup of each connection is covered in the following sections.
Tooltips are provided throughout the Connection and Setup Managers, giving you context sensitive help.
The “Connections” tab of the Connection Manager is available to any user of the thin client. Illustration 10 shows a Connection Manager with two configured connections. One connection is called “Login to master server” and is of type xdmcp – it's an X windows connection. The second connection is a secure shell login called “Admin secure shell login”. In this window, neither connection is currently highlighted.
Illustration
10: An overview of the Connections tab of the Connection Manager
In Illustration 10, the numbered features of
the interface are:
The Connect button. Launches the highlighted connection. If the highlighted connection is already connected, then the connection becomes the current connection.
The Connections tab is a lighter gray, showing that it is the selected tab.
The Configure tab is a darker shade of gray, showing that it is not selected.
The “Name” field shows the name of the connection, as given by the administrator.
The “Type” field shows the connection protocol.
The “Connected?” field will be checked for any connections which are currently active.
The “Program output” field shows the first line of any output generated by the connection, after it has finished. This can be useful for diagnosing failed connections due to network problems.
The “Details” field will be checked if the connection generates output. Click on the checkbox to view the full output in a separate screen.
The “Terminal” button is optional – it can be switched on in the Setup Manager. This is intended for power users and administrators. Note that if the terminal is available, a user of the WML Linux Thin Client cannot be prevented from manually editing the connection configuration.
Illustration
11: The Program output window
In the example shown in Illustration 11, the
output from ssh is that server.network.com is an unknown name,
indicating that the domain name server couldn't resolve
server.network.com into an IP address.
The Configuration tab is password protected and is intended for the use of administrators. Illustration 12 shows the Configuration tab with the same connections configured as in Illustration 10
Illustration
12: An overview of the Configuration tab of the Connection Manager
The features of the Configuration tab are:
The “Name” field shows the name of the connection, as given by the administrator.
The “Type” field shows the connection protocol.
If the “At boot?” field is checked, the connection will be launched when the WML Linux Thin Client powers up. You can check and uncheck this field without opening the Connection Details window for the connection.
The “New” button is used to create a new connection.
The “Edit” button is used to edit an existing connection (highlight the connection then press “Edit”).
The “Delete” button is used to delete a connection. Note that a running connection may not be deleted – first shut it down, then highlight its entry in the list and press the “Delete” button.
The “Setup” button launches the Setup Manager. This has the same effect as pressing the F2 key.
The “ICA Settings” button opens a window to configure certain settings which are used by the Citrix ICA client program for all ICA connections.
The “Logout” button ends your use of the Configuration tab. Once you have logged out, to add, edit or delete connections, you'll need to re-enter your password.
To set up any new connection, you need to switch to the “Configuration” tab of the Connection manager. You will be asked for the administration password, which is simply “password” for a factory delivered box.
Illustration
13: Connection Manager - Entering the administration password
On the configuration tab, click on the “new”
button to create a new connection.
Illustration
14: Connection Manager – Clicking the “New” button
to create a connection
A window will appear with a drop-down menu from which you can choose the type of connection you want to create. In Illustration 15, a Nomachine NX connection is highlighted. Press OK, and the configuration window of the selected connection will appear, and you can then enter the details for the connection.
Illustration
15: Choosing a Nomachine NX connection
Illustration
16: Choosing "Edit" for the highlighted connection
To edit a previously configured connection,
select the “Configuration” tab again, entering the
password if necessary. Highlight the connection to edit, and press
the “Edit” button. The relevant connection details window
will appear and the configuration can be changed as normal.
If you are editing a Nomachine NX connection: If you previously elected to save the password of the user, the act of editing the connection will delete the stored password and the user will need to re-enter the password the next time the connection is run.
Once you have created an ICA connection with a given connection name, you can no longer change that name when you edit the details of the connection. All other details of the connection may be changed.
Illustration
17: Entering network details for Nomachine NX connection
Create a new connection of type Nomachine NX.
The NoMachine NX Connection Details window will appear with the
“Network” Tab pre-selected. This window provides an
interface to create the NX session . When the session is launched,
NoMachine's own NX Client program is used to launch the connection.
The NoMachine NX Connection Details window has fields for the connection name and the network details – server address, port, username etc. You can also select a number of options to control how the NX connection behaves.
In Connection Name, enter the name of the connection, as you want it to appear in the Connection Manager. The Connection Name may include spaces, but none of the characters: " ' = , . ; : / \.
In the address field, enter either the network name or the IP number of the NX server. The port to connect to is usually the same as the SSH port (22) but this is not always the case. Enter the username for the connection and check the checkbox if the password should be stored on the thin client between reboots. If stored, it will be kept in hashed form in the connection's .nxs file.
NX connections use SSH to encrypt the connection between the client and server and as such NX is the most secure graphical thin client connection available. The login process uses a two-stage process. The first login uses a key-based login. A standard NX key is supplied as a default, and using this key, a client can proceed to the second secure login, which uses a password as authentication token. If you use the default NX key on your server, then any client can pass the stage 1 login, and can attempt to use password based login to gain access to the server. This remains secure, but relies on quality passwords.
Illustration
18: Managing the NX SSL key
To increase the security of your connection,
you can replace the default key on your NX server. Please refer to
Nomachine's documentation on setting up the NX server. Once you have
generated a non-standard key for the stage 1 login, you need to load
it onto your WML Linux Thin Client. Put the key file on a USB
pen-drive and plug it into your WML Linux Thin Client. Press the
“Manage Key” button in the NX Connection Details window.
The Public SSL Key window will appear. While you could technically
type in the key, it would be a thankless task. Press the “Change
Key” button to open a file dialog, which will allow you to find
the key on your USB drive.
Illustration
19: Browsing for an SSL key
The illustration shows a user choosing “my_ssl_key” which is in the “Home” directory – this user possibly transferred the file to the thin client using a web browser or the sftp client. To access your key on a flash drive, you will need to click on the “Filesystem” icon, then choose the “flash” directory. Click “Open” and the contents of the file will appear in the Public SSL Key window. Close the Public SSL Key window and proceed with setting up the NX connection.
The “Desktop” Tab (Illustration 20) allows you to choose the type of desktop to launch using the NX Client. The main choices given are GNOME, KDE, CDE. Most users will choose GNOME or KDE. To find out more about launching custom sessions and applications, please refer to the Nomachine documentation – this setup window has the same options as Nomachine's own NX client. Refer to Nomachine also for more information about setting the XDM Settings.
The Window Size option allows you to choose whether your NX session will appear in a managed window on the WML Linux Thin Client desktop, or as a fullscreen window occupying the entire display.
Images are encoded by the NX compression protocol using JPEG, PNG or Xbitmap formats. The image encoding drop-down menu allows you to specify which should be used, or “Default” will allow NX to choose based on the speed of the connection, as specified on the Network tab. JPEG offers the best compression for low bandwidth connections, but as it is a lossy compression format, the image quality of your screen will not be as good compared with PNG or Xbitmap formats. With JPEG image encoding, the quality may be chosen. Set the quality to low for the slowest connections.
Illustration
20: The "Desktop" tab of the Nomachine connection details
window
When you have entered the settings correctly, press “OK” and your connection will appear in the list of connections in the Connection Manager.
Switch back to the Connections Tab on the Connection Manager, highlight your new NX connection, then click the “Connect” button to launch it.
Illustration
21: Launching the new NX session
The Nomachine NX client Login window appears
and the user can enter his username. The username may also be changed
at launch time. The username field will always be filled in with the
last username used to connect to the server.
Illustration
22: The Nomachine NX Login details window
Once “Login” has been clicked, the
NX client will connect to the server, authenticate the user and
launch the desktop session.
Illustration
23: During authentication, the NX client will display progress
information
The desktop then appears, if authentication is
successful. A message about the NX cache will be displayed the first
time the user logs onto the server. This message is a normal part of
the NX connection procedure. It will not be displayed if the user
logs off the server, then logs on again, as long as the thin client
hasn't been rebooted. If the thin client is rebooted, and
the user logs on to the server, the NX cache message will be shown
again. This is because the NX cache files are stored in a volatile
RAM disk on the WML Linux Thin Client.
Illustration
24: The common NX cache information message
Press “OK” to acknowledge the cache message and proceed with your work as normal!
Illustration
25: A new KDE desktop session with OpenOffice.org word processor,
delivered via Nomachine NX
Editing a connection is very similar to creating a new connection, except that you select a pre-existing NX connection in the “Configure” Tab of the Connection Manager, and then click the “Edit” button. The Nomachine NX Connection Details window will appear, with the existing settings. Simply edit the details as necessary, and click “OK”.
In the Configuration tab, click “New” and select “Citrix ICA” from the drop down menu. The Citrix ICA configuration window will appear. The tabbed window follows the format of Citrix's own Linux client program. Please refer to their documentation for connections details.
Illustration
26: Citrix ICA Connection Details window
The simplest ICA connection can be set up
simply by filling in the “Connection Name” and “Server”
fields and setting the Network Protocol to “TCP/IP”.
Unlike the other connection types, the connection name cannot
subsequently be changed after the “OK” button has been
clicked and the ICA connection created.
The “Window” tab allows the window size to be configured – as with all the supported connections, it defaults to being fullscreen.
If you wish to use sound in your ICA connection, make sure you switch off the esound daemon in the Setup Manager. In the “Connection” tab you can then check the “Enable sound” checkbox and choose the sound quality setting.
You can access a local USB drive within your Citrix session. To do so, you need to click the “ICA Settings” button in the Configuration tab of the Connection Manager and choose the “Drive Mapping” tab of the “Citrix ICA Settings” Window. Click the “enable drive mapping” checkbox and enter the drive letter you would like the drive to appear as on your Citrix desktop. This is shown in Illustration 27.
Illustration
27: Enabling drive mapping in Citrix ICA Settings
RDP allows you to connection the WML Linux Thin Client to a Microsoft Terminal Server. It also allows you to connect to a Microsoft Windows XP Pro desktop PC. RDP Connections are very easy to configure.
To create a new RDP connection, click “New” in the Configuration tab and select “RDP (rdesktop)” from the drop down menu. The “RDP Connection Details” window will appear.
Illustration
28: Editing connection details for a new RDP connection
Fill in the Connection name with the text which
will identify the connection in the Connection Manager.
In the “Server” field, enter the IP address or the network name of the Terminal Server.
Note that you cannot simply enter the Windows name of the computer unless this is the same as the tcp/ip network name.
The port defaults to 3389, which is the standard port number used by the RDP protocol. Change this only if you know it is different for your server.
The “Username” and “Windows Domain” fields are optional, and can be changed when the connection is run.
The “Startup Prog” and “Initial Directory” fields are optional and can be used to run scripts when the user logs in.
The “Image Depth” field controls how many colours to use for the connection. If 24 bit is chosen, but the server only supports 8 or 16 bit colour, then the RDP client will fall back to the highest supported resolution.
Uncheck the “Fullscreen” checkbox to run the RDP connection in a managed window.
rdesktop is always called with the options -r sound:local and -r disk:usbdisk=/flash to allow sound output in RDP sessions and usb flash disk access. Note that you must stop esound from running if you wish to use sound in RDP connections.
X Windows is used by almost every Unix and Linux machine with a graphical desktop. You can connect to any Linux PC or server using XDMCP – the X Display Manager Control Protocol. However, most Linux distributions ship with this feature switched off for the sake of security. To enable it refer to your distribution's documentation. Hint: The file /etc/X11/xdm/Xaccess should be configured to allow XDMCP connections, and your Login manager must also be configured to allow remote connections; see gdmsetup for the GNOME display manager, /etc/X11/xdm/xdm-config for the X Display Manager and kdmctl for the KDE display manager.
To set up an X Windows connection, follow the usual procedure, choosing “X Windows (XDMCP)” in the drop down menu of the “Choose connection type” window.
Illustration
29: Filling in the details for an X Windows connection
As with all the other connections, the
“Connection name” identifies the connection and the
server is the computer to connect to, either by TCP/IP network name
or IP address.
Check “Repeat Login” if you want the Login window for your Linux/Unix server to reappear after a user logs out.
“Run on new vt” is checked by default and means that the X connection will run on a new virtual terminal in genuine fullscreen mode. If this is unchecked, then the X connection will run in a managed window. If you then check “Fullscreen”, the managed window will occupy all of the display area. Note that running in a managed window is slower than running your X connection on a new vt.
If you want to connect to any willing XDMCP broadcast server on your network, enter “broadcast” in the “Server” field instead of a server network name or IP address.
By default, the WML Linux Thin Client uses a limited number of fonts provided by its own X font server. For information about configuring your WML Linux Thin Client to use fonts from another X font server on your network, see the Setup Manager sections.
VNC is a well established protocol for providing access to a graphical computer session via a network. VNC servers are available for Unix/Linux and Windows computers.
The WML Linux Thin Client ships with the TightVNC vnc viewer program, which extends the VNC protocol adding extra compression to the connection, by using JPEG image compression – the original VNC protocol sent uncompressed bitmap images over the network.
Open a new connection and choose “VNC (tightvnc)” from the drop down menu.
Illustration
30: Configuring a VNC connection
“Connection name” and “Server”
are used to identify the connection and control which server to
connect to. Like RDP, SSH, telnet and NX connections, the port can be
configured, but with VNC, an alternative to specifying the port is to
specify the display number. Illustration 30 shows a user changing
from port to display.
The “Username” field is optional, some VNC servers will not require a username.
The “Encoding” field refers to image encoding. If this menu is left as “defaults” a range of image encodings will be tried. To specify a particular encoding, select from the list. Possible encodings are: copyrect, tight, hextile, zlib, corre, rre and raw. “tight” encoding uses JPEG compression and is the recommended setting. This is the first encoding to be tried if “defaults” is selected.
“Image quality” is used to specify the amount of JPEG compression used if “tight” encoding is chosen.
The “Fullscreen” checkbox determines whether the session will run fullscreen or in a managed window.
Secure shell (openssh) connections use shared key encryption to protect the data transmitted between client and server. This is a very secure form of text-mode terminal connection. The SSH Connection Details window is simple, with just four fields.
Illustration
31: Adding a secure shell connection
The Connection name and Server fields are
common to all connections. As with other connections, the “Server”
field should be filled in with the DNS network name or IP address of
the ssh server. The port defaults to 22, the usual port on which ssh
server daemons run. The “Username” field is optional. If
left blank, the user will be asked for a username when the connection
is started.
Illustration
32: Entering the ssh username on launching a connection
Configuring telnet sessions is almost identical to configuring an SSH connection. The only difference is that the username field is always ignored and the default port is 23.
Illustration
33: Editing connections details for a telnet connection
The WML Linux Thin Client ships with two web browsers. One is a very simple web browser which launches quickly. This browser is called “Dillo”. For more full-featured web browsing, the WML Linux Thin Client provides Mozilla Firefox. This loads more slowly than Dillo, but renders websites much more correctly.
To configure a web browser connection, click “New” in the Configuration tab, and select either “web browser (light – dillo)” or “web browser (full – mozilla)”.
Illustration
34: Editing connection details for a web browser
There are only two fields to fill in, the
connection name and the “Server”, which in this case is
likely to be a normal website address.
Firefox application settings are stored on the WML Linux Thin Client in an archive and unpacked into a ramdisk freshly, each time the browser launches. This means that bookmarks, saved passwords and other settings don't get stored on the thin client. It also ensures that one user cannot render the browser useless for the next user.
The system administrator can generate a site-specific set of Firefox settings. To do this first open the Mozilla Firefox browser and configure it suitably, then close the browser down. Next carry out the following command in a terminal window:
tar -cf /etc/persistent/firefox.tar -C /tmp/mozilla/ firefox
Illustration 35 shows the command being executed in a terminal window on the client.
Illustration
35: Storing Mozilla Firefox settings from the last browser session
The
configured settings will now be used each time Firefox is launched.
The WML Linux Thin Client provides the Mono execution environment to run .NET 1.1 program. See www.go-mono.com for more details about Mono.
The WML Linux Thin Client provides both the Winforms library to run unmodified .NET 1.1 Windows programs, and the GTK# library so that desktop programs can be run with the same look and feel as the Foundry Linux Connection Manager.
Create a new connection in the Connection Manager and choose connection type “Custom .NET program”.
Illustration
36: Setting up a Mono .NET program to run locally on the WML Linux
Thin Client
Enter the connection name for the program, as
it will appear in the Connection Manager. The name should match
the title of the window which your program will create. This is
important, because the Connection Manager will recognise and manage
your program's window based on its name. If the window doesn't match,
the WML Linux Thin Client will be unable to switch from other
connections to your program using the Ctrl-Alt-Down key combination.
The next field is a drop down menu, which will contain programs stored in the home directory of the WML Linux Thin Client user. If there is no program in this menu, then enter a URL to the program in the “Download program from” field and press the “Download” button. If the program downloads successfully, then it will appear in the “Program” drop down menu.
If you check “Download each time”, then before running the program, the WML Linux Thin Client will try to download a fresh version of the program from the specified URL.
“Available disk space” tells you how much local storage is available to store the .NET program.
The WML Linux Thin Client provides the native Sun Secure Global Desktop client (previously known as Tarantella). Setup of Secure Global Desktop is simple:
Illustration
37: Creating a new Sun Secure Global Desktop connection
Owners of clients with larger flash drives (128 MB and above) are also able to access Secure Global Desktop using the Mozilla Firefox web browser and the Java plugin for Firefox.
Smartcards may be used with Secure Global Desktop for two factor authentications, using the optional Omnikey Cardman 3121.
page
Copyright © 2006 William Matthew Limited. All rights reserved