Thin client vs. PC for RDP-only connection - windows

Context : I'm switching my whole desktop environment, and after many thoughts, I'm going with a Virtual Machine hosted on a Google Cloud (Win Server 2016)
The server is a "Single User" machine, that will receive an RDP connection. The terminal must allow :
Dual Monitor
Port forwarding (USB, Local Printer)
What would be the best option :
Buying a refurbished PC, and use Native Remote Desktop
A proper thin client that supports RDP
Raspberry Pi 3 (Linux with a RDP session)
I'm looking for the best performance for general work (no 3d, Cad, ect.)

I used for this purpose a raspberry pi with Raspbian. For the remote sessions I use Vinagre.
It works very well and it's cheap.
But I am not sure about multimonitor and port forwarding...

Related

Howto route network traffic from WSL2 through a VPN connection established by the Windows 10 host?

So what I'm trying to do is to use nested VPN connections inside WSL2. The Windows 10 host is logged into one (Cisco AnyConnect, if it makes any difference) VPN, and I'm trying to establish another (openconnect GP protocol) VPN connection inside WSL2, that would get routed through the host OS's established VPN tunnel.
This all works fine with VirtualBox using NAT networking, but I have absolutely no idea how to achieve the same result with WSL2.
Zero experience with Windows networking, so don't really know where to even start (other than Googling, which has been of zero help so far). I have no need for any fancy VLANs or network confs for WSL2 containers. I'm simply using WSL2 to avoid the utter horseshit that is development tools running on Windows.

IoT management page with P2P connection

I'm really looking for advice and a starting point more than anything. So I'll try my best to explain my end goals and the challenge. I want to set up a local WiFi connection (P2P) between a Rpi3 (or any embedded system really, running linux) and a laptop. The Pi should be the server and laptop the client. The raspberry PI is going to be reading samples over USB from an SDR. I want the laptop to be able to connect to the network the pi throws up, and be able open a browser and view the results. I'm guessing what i need to read up on is ports/sockets and web programming in general. The cheepy IoT sensors and light bulbs seem to be able to do this (opening network and forwarding data) relatively easily but i cannot find any information online to aid in my quest. All the Best and thanks in advance.
Since the embedded system will be running Linux, you can do something along the following lines:
setup the wifi as an Access Point (example). Also setup DHCP Server (example), so the wifi will assign an IP address to connecting laptop.
Install a webserver (e.g. Apache).
Create the webpage/ web application you need to "serve" the data. Install this into Apache.
Ask follow-up questions if you like.

Accessing Ras Pi 3 phpmyadmin on windows machine

I've got an Arduino hooked up to a Raspberry Pi 3 via USB and feeding some analog data to a database I created.
I've set up a database on my Raspberry Pi 3 (have everything set up phpMyAdmin and MySQL). I'm feeding data into it and it works. I want to access the database through my Windows machine, though. I have Apache, phpMyAdmin, and MySQL all installed.
I'm pretty sure I've edited/copied all files correctly and I can get to localhost/phpmyadmin on my windows machine.
I'm just not sure what I need to do to get to my Pi's database from there. Working with Wifi currently. I don't necessarily have access to a router since I'm working of my apartment building's wifi. I have VPN installed on Pi but haven't really configured it yet if that's the route I need to take.
Any help appreciated
Since the database exists on your Raspberry Pi, you don't need to have MySQL installed on your Windows machine. You generally only need one MySQL server which can be accessed by many clients. In this case, since you want to use phpMyAdmin to access the data, you have the option of installing phpMyAdmin on your Windows machine or the Raspberry Pi. I highly recommend putting it on the Pi, because it simplifies the connection process to have it on the same machine that MySQL is using.
You'll need some supporting software to get phpMyAdmin running; a web server and the PHP interpreter. These are all easily available on the Raspberry Pi (depending on your operating system, of course; I use Raspbian and there are packages distributed for each). Then you'd use the web browser on your Windows machine to access the web server on the Pi (likely through the IP address; you'll have to query your Pi to figure out what the address is, perhaps with ip addr at the command prompt).
You can certainly use phpMyAdmin installed on your Windows machine instead, but then need to ensure that the MySQL daemon is listening for network connections and that you have a user permitted to connect from an external network connection (I'm seeing that many packages are restricting both of these, as a security precaution, in their distributions now). It's easy to enable yourself, but easier to just connect from a local PHP instance.
Unless your machines are on two different networks or you wish to connect to your home network from an outside connection on the Internet, you shouldn't need the VPN for this project. Your wifi is likely supplied by a router that's giving you a local address and will allow you to connect to other machines on your local network segment, so once you find the IP address you should be able to connect directly.

Is where a way to stop windows Smart Card service from redirecting to local computer when using RDP?

We have dongle server what allow us to use them in differen VM servers (we use VMWare).
We connected some dongles to VM Windows 2012 server. If we use VWare terminal to connetc to server we can see all the dongles and our software can work with them with no problems.
But if we connecting to server via RDP all dongles stop working.
Even if we turn off smart card sharing in RDP options.
As stated here this is default behaviour of Smart Card service with RDP.
But we dont want crash our app behaviour then someone want to do some some maintainance on this server.
Is where a way to handle this rather than turning RDP connection off?

Detect RDP Session on Remote WinXP machine (not on local network or domain)

I have set up a Win XP machine at work that we use as our server, to allow RDP connections. This allows all our staff to access the server from home when needed. As it is not a server OS, we are missing many of the terminal services features a regular server would have. The machine only allows one RDP session at a time (which is a minor inconvenience, but not a big deal).
What is bothersome, is that no one can tell if the server is currently being used in an RDP session, and we all keep booting each other off. Every solution I have found online assumes the remote computer is a Server OS or on a local network/domain. Our staff's home computers are not connected to the office network and we have no domain set up at the office.
Is there any way to tell if the server is in an RDP session before remoting onto the server from home? Ideally we would be able to detect which home computer is accessing the server. But if that is not possible, it would be extremely helpful to at least know that an RDP session is running.
We were previously using logmein, which could tell us if the remote computer keyboard and mouse were active and allow a chat with the user currently remoted on/physically on the machine. This was extremely convenient, but involves logging onto the logmein website and going through a semi-lengthy process of connecting. It is also much slower and resolution is much worse than RDP. Not super convenient for regular daily use.
This post deals with the same issue
https://superuser.com/questions/313390/ways-to-check-if-user-is-active-on-remote-machine-before-rdping
but the accepted response is to use qwinsta on cmd, which I believe is only available on server OS's. Other responses include using psexec (I've tried using psloggedon.exe, but this appears to only work for users on the same domain). Another suggests using the wmic.exe command, but when I try that I get the error: The RPC Server is unavailable (I think this also needs to be run on the same domain).
So basically - is there any way to check for active rdp sessions on a Win XP machine from a remote computer not on the local network/domain?
I'm open to outside-the-box solutions like writing a simple app to run on the xp server and tell remote machines what IP is connected in an RDP session.
Going on Harry Johnston's suggestion, I wrote an app which finds who is connected to the xp machine on port 3389, and relays that information by udp to receiving apps. Now we can check if someone is connected and who it is before unwittingly booting them off. Thanks Harry!

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