RDP rdesktop with file integration

Found a cool way to remote from a Linux platform to a Windows platform with a redirect, so that the windows pc can mount the Linux file system.

Using rdesktop from a terminal:

rdesktop -f -k de xxx.xxx.xxx.x -r disk:linux=/home/aaron/Downloads/

Update:

So, I have just discovered that there are many RDP front-ends for linux that really are just using rdesktop behind the scenes. I like to use KRDC (KDE Remote Desktop Client). I can edit the properties of the connection, add the parameters:

-r disk:linux=/home/aaron/Downloads/

And I get my linux mount point!

VirtualBox – Linux Installation

Installing VirtualBox is not a straight-forward matter under Linux, I don’t care how much geeks want to say it is. But as always, I did get to learn some new things 😉 Here’s what worked for me under Oracle Linux 6.3, and it was similar for other distros included SUSE 12, Ubuntu 11, Open Solaris, and Fedora 11(?).

Setup the repo:

# cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
# wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/rhel/virtualbox.repo

Install kernel development packages:

# yum update
# yum install binutils qt gcc make patch libgomp glibc-headers glibc-devel kernel-headers kernel-dev

Install dkms for keeping track of kernel versions:

# yum install kernel* dkms gcc

Restart.

Then install VirtualBox:

# yum install VirtualBox-4.2

Set kernel parameter:

# KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-194.11.1.el5-x86_64
# export KERN_DIR

Rebuild VirtualBox kernel modules:

# /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

VirtualBox – Will Never Work

I have been trying to get Oracle VirtualBox 4.2 to work on my spare work PC. Its a Dell Optiplex 755 running a Core2Duo 7200 processor. And it’s the processor thats the problem. I can run other OS’s like Open Solaris, but I need to run Windows 8 to help assess if we should upgrade from Windows 7 here at work.

I have tried a few different Linux distro’s and have run into the same problem each time when starting a VM in VirtualBox:

“VT-x/AMD-V hardware acceleration is not available on your system. Certain guests (e.g. OS/2 and QNX) require this feature and will fail to boot without it.”

So after enabling VT-x in the BIOS and installing VirtualBox correctly onto Oracle Linux 6, I finally found a post on the InterGoogle suggesting it could be the processor that doesn’t support hardware virtualisation, and supplied a link to a web page showing processor compatibility. This was exactly the problem. Others have returned their PC’s to Dell when faced with this situation. I can’t do that, I will just need to wait for the office to make a better spec’d machine available for my virtual uses.

Here is a PDF version of the processor/virtualisation compatibility list:

Intel Virtualisation Compatibility