Hi Alan,

I just wanted to say that this is a great article! It’s very interesting and I will most certainly be checking out Virtual Box when time permits. In the short term, however, I thought perhaps I would tell everyone what I am currently doing to achieve the same thing.

Requirements:
Linux
Windows 2K,XP,V
Must be accessible via network
Mine is running as a guest virtual machine using VMWare
rdesktop >= 1.5.0 (http://www.rdesktop.org/)
Seamless RDP executable (http://www.cendio.com/seamlessrdp/)

Step 1:

On your windows computer, make sure that terminal services is enabled. This is different on 2K/XP/V so check the appropriate documentation for your Windows. I’m doing it on 2000 server and XP, so here’s each of those:

XP ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Right click on “My Computer”
Click on the “Remote” tab
Check the box that says “Allow users to connect remotely to this computer”
Open “Control Panel”
Open “Windows Firewall”
Click on the “Exceptions” tab
Make sure “Remote Desktop” is checked
Done

2000 Server ~~~~~~~~~
Open “Control Panel”
Open “Add Remove Programs”
Click on “Add Remove Windows Components”
Check “Terminal Services”
Complete the installation and insert the Windows CD if required (Tip: Copy contents of the install CD to the hard drive so you don’t need the CD as often)

Step 2:

On your Linux machine, install rdesktop >= 1.5.0 (which has seamless RDP capabilities). This is completely different for each distribution, so google [distro]+rdesktop+howto (replace [distro] with your distribution name redhat,mandriva,ubuntu,gentoo,etc) and see what you get.

Step 3:

Unzip the seamless RDP executable on your Windows computer. It can go anywhere, however, make sure you make a note of where you unzip it as it will be needed later. Personally, I like making the path as short as possible so I rename the executable. So c:/s.exe is probably what I would do (make sure all the files are unzipped to the same directory).

Step 4:

Obtain the IP address of the windows machine (this assumes that the Windows machine’s RDP port is accessible via a network connection from your Linux machine).
Click “Start”
Click “Run”
Type “cmd”
Type “ipconfig”
Make a note of the IP Address

Step 5:

On the Linux computer, open xterm or some other terminal application and enter the following line making replacements where required:

rdesktop -A -u [username] -p [password] -s “c:\s.exe notepad” [windows ip]

Which, if all went to plan, should launch notepad with no Linux window decorations. Depending on the window manager, this window can be resized, minimized, maximized, whatever. I use fluxbox for a window manager and can use my own shortcuts to move the window easily through all my desktops and organize them with a single shortcut, etc. Gnome has some nice shortcuts too that enable you to move the windows through your desktops also. Not sure about KDE, Enlightenment, etc.

Below are some nifty examples of command lines you can do to launch certain things:

SQL Enterprise Manager
rdesktop -A -u [username] -p [password] -s “c:\s.exe mmc c:\progra~1\micros~3\80\tools\binn\sqlser~1.msc” [windows ip]

IIS
rdesktop -A -u [username] -p [password] -s “c:\s.exe mmc c:\winnt\System32\inetsrv\iis.msc” [windows ip]

IE
rdesktop -A -u [username] -p [password] -s “c:\s.exe c:\progra~1\intern~1\iexplore.exe” [windows ip]

Have fun and great article!

Forgot to mention that you can also enable XP machines to allow more than one RDP session at a time

http://www.golod.com/2005/10/enabling-multiple-remote-desktop-sessions-in-windows-xp-professional-and-media-center-edition-2005/
http://sig9.com/articles/concurrent-remote-desktop
http://riccardo.raneri.it/blog/eng/index.php/2006/04/24/windows-xp-multiuser-remote-desktop/
http://blandname.com/2006/09/19/running-terminal-services-on-windows-xp/

Enjoy!

I’m sure someone will find your post interesting. Thanks. Not really using M$ any more my vision went all blurry over the Microsoft stuff…

The other way round is cool too. When I used to use Windows on my desktop I used a great little X for Windows app called XMing (http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/). Works a treat if you want to get at your server/other linux boxes. Oh yes, it’s free and Open Source too!

Al

Cool Alan,

I’ll check out xming and see what kind of benefits it offers over the RDP method. I’m right there with ya as far as the blurring caused by M$ and wish it wasn’t necessary to use it at all. Lucky me, I get to work on Windows 2000 servers for work! If VNC offered some type of seamless capabilities, I would gladly use that instead of the closed RDP protocol, especially with the limitation of 16 bit color depths for 2K server.

I’ve been trying more recently to use ssh -> windows as much as possible so I can just jump in, type a command (tsdiscon 1 /v) and then bound back out as fast as possible. Kind of fun learning the commands for some of the operations and good ol’ pstools makes it quite a bit easier to accomplish the tasks required.

Thanks again for all the tips Alan,

Have a Microsoftastic day

There is a strong shift to a hybrid system as many are now adopting linux for security and stability with guest windoze when forced for legacy

Anyway im running Ubuntu gutsy with guest win 2k pro setup bound by the wonderful VirtualBox made installation very smooth and simple. Just remember to reboot to add VB kernal and make sure you go to users permission GUI in ubuntu and scroll down and add yourself to the VB allowed list otherwise you cant get into the the box. Add VB additions will whisk your win2k drivers from 16 bit color to 32bit to any size your native card can support. The seamless integration mode is great. The mouse runs directly from ubuntu control direct into windows screen its quite bizarre.

Its quite odd to see windows media player sat in the middle of ubuntu desktop even though its not something i would actually use in this way but makes a nice demonstration. In fact the time to get to 1st win2k welcome screen was just 34 mins but then required 8 years of upgrades and security patches!! This took me about another 2 hours of loading,booting the win box to get it up to date and tweaked to my settings. However i STRONGLY recommend win2k for VirtualBox compared to winXP because win2k is lighter and so much fast and will run on just 128k of ram versus XP struggles on 512k and really needs at least a gig to run a guest setup. It no myth win2k outperforms 8 outta 10 benchmarks against XP and flies in the face of over bloated Vista except on the fastest machines with gigs of ram.

Unfortunately with several bits of windows software i need/love then this is my perfect solution and no WINE just doest cut it for several apps including several of the p2p TV apps which need windows player 9,10,11 or they wont run.

[...] engine which sits very well on top of my Linux desktops and servers. For example, it enables us to run the dreaded Windows inside a secure cage on our safe and sound Linux infrastructure. For when we need to do integration [...]

Hi
I want to run windows in Ubuntu, using Virtualbox

Is windows virus free when running in Linux, do I partion my hard drive ( say 50/50)?

Regurds Bert

Hi H Todd (Bert),

Windows is NEVER virus free. However, running it inside a VM does mean that it can’t damage the rest of your host. Of course it may well propagate over the LAN but hey-hum.

You do not need to create partitions. VirtualBox Virtual Machines are actually just a single, albeit large, file with a .vdi extension.

[...] Virtualbox You can put Virtualbox in the same range as Vmware. They provide a performant virtualization platform. Yet one of their core features (which I still miss in Vmware, apart from Fusion) is the “seamless” mode. It means your guest OS can appear on your desktop without having to be inside a window. You can run application (say notepad) and it will appear as a single window on your desktop. More info? [...]