Accessing CS Linux Machines With Microsoft Remote Desktop
Created 2015-08-26 & Modified 2021-10-19 by Hanz Makmur
- Login via a Web browser is added on Oct 13, 2021. No setup/client is required. See section D. Connecting to Windows Remote Desktop Using a Browser or Using CS WebLogin to Access iLab Machines
- As of August 30th, 2021, Remote Desktop service will require DUO MFA
- As of April 1, 2020, “due to recent and increasing exploits utilizing RDP, a decision was made [by OIT] to block this port from the internet into Rutgers University address space.” This decision requires everyone using Microsoft Remote Desktop to utilize a Remote Desktop Gateway or VPN. This document now reflects the changes.
Important: CS Linux Machine uses your Rutgers netid and CS Password. If you have not done so, please Activate your iLab account and Set your CS password before logging in.
One way to connect to CS Linux machines is via a Microsoft Remote Desktop client. Remote Desktop clients exist on many platforms. Below are instructions on accessing it via Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
A. Connecting to Windows Remote Desktop from WindowsOS
Windows Remote Desktop client is typically preinstalled on all Windows OS. If you can’t find it, please install Remote Desktop clients first.
To start a Remote Desktop Connection on your PC, type Remote Desktop Connection in the Search box on the taskbar and select Remote Desktop Connection.
There are two ways to use the Remote Desktop client to connect to iLab machines. Sometimes, a VPN server goes down, or a Gateway goes down. If method 1 fails, try method 2, and vice versa. You need to follow one of the methods below to connect.
Method 1: Connecting using a VPN service
- First, establish your VPN connection by following VPN instructions.
- In the Remote Desktop Connection app, type the name of the system you want to connect, for example, ilab.cs.rutgers.edu, and select button.
- On a successful Remote Desktop login, a connection will be made and an iLab Login window will be shown.
Method 2: Connecting Using Remote Desktop Protocol Gateway Service
- OIT recommends this method to reduce load to its VPN server. This method utilizes University Remote Desktop Protocol Gateway Service.
- Users must enable two-step login to access the remote desktop gateways. Users can find out more information or enroll on the two-step login website.
- Setting up Remote Desktop Gateway. (This needs to be setup once.)
- To setup remote desktop gateway, click on the Show Options menu.
- Then Click on the [Advanced]Tab which opens another window.
- In the [Connect from Anywhere] section, click on button.
- A window like below will open. Under the [Connection settings] section, enter: rdgateway.rutgers.edu in the server name as shown below:
- To setup remote desktop gateway, click on the Show Options menu.
- click the button when done to return you back to previous windows.
- To start your Remote Desktop Session, simply Click button
- A Remote Gateway login window will open as shown below. To login to the gateway, you need to enter your username as: rad\NetID. The word ‘rad\‘ is important and don’t forget to replace word NetID with your actual NetID. On the second field, enter your netid password not CS Linux password.
- Look on your mobile phone Duo app. and click on Approve. Unfortunately, this service is not compatible with the SMS or hardware token options for authenticating with Duo
- On a successful gateway login, a connection will be made and an iLab Login window will show.
Logging into iLab machine Remote Desktop
Note: you may be presented with a warning window
. 
Don’t be alarm when you see this warning. Most Remote Desktop servers do not have valid a SSL certificate installed to confirm the identity of the machine. To continue, please Click the button. To avoid it from asking you again, click the ☒Don’t ask check box before clicking the button.
On a successful Remote Desktop connection either via VPN or Remote Desktop Gateway, you will be presented with the following login window.
Select or from the menu, enter your NetId in the Username field and your CS Linux password and click button. On a successful connection, you will see a Linux Desktop.
Hints: to get a different Windows Manager, see Using Different Windows Manager with Remote Desktop section below. Mate or XFCE Desktop is recommended as it is faster and look familiar to MacOS or WindowsOS users.
If you have issue with some app not displaying proper graphics, Set your Vido color to .
B. Connecting to Windows Remote Desktop from MacOSX
If you are using MacOSX, Remote Desktop clients needs to be installed first as it does not come preinstalled on the system. You can download Microsoft Remote Desktop client from the Mac App Store. Once installed, follow these steps.
1. Set up Remote Desktop connection to iLab.rutgers.edu
Under Window menu select Connection Center.
In Connection Center window, click , and then select and enter as shown,
2. Set Up Remote Desktop Gateway ( you only need to do this once)
Because Remote Desktop protocol is now blocked by OIT from outside RUNet, you need to use University Remote Desktop Gateway or use University VPN. You can skip the gateway setup if you are on RUNet or are using University VPN connection.
REQUIREMENT: Users must enable two-step login to access the remote desktop gateways. Users can find out more information or enroll on the two-step login website.
- To setup a gateway by clicking menu.
- In the Add a Gateway window, enter as shown below
- In the User account field, select Add User Account and enter as follow,
Note: make sure to replace your_netid with your actual NetID and enter your actual NetID password. When done, click on the button
- To setup a gateway by clicking menu.
3. Setup Screen Resolution and Color
To setup your screen resolution, Click on the Display. This is where you can adjust your screen size. In this example we use . You can resize this to your liking.
Set your color to to avoid issues with some apps.
Once done, click button to list it in the Saved Desktop groups.
4. Logging into iLab Machine with Remote Desktop Client
To connect to ilab.cs.rutgers.edu desktop you just created, just click it of the list of Saved Desktop connections.
There are two steps in this connection. First your Mac will connect to Remote Desktop gateway. As you connect to the Remote Desktop gateway, look on your mobile phone Duo app. and click on Approve to allow two factor authentication via Duo to work. Unfortunately, this service is not compatible with the SMS or hardware token options for authenticating with Duo
Once you get access to Remote Desktop Gateway, your Mac will then establish connection to iLab.cs.rutgers.edu using that Remote Desktop gateway session.
Note: You may be presented with a warning window.
Don’t be alarm when you see this warning. Most Remote Desktop servers do not have valid a SSL certificate installed to confirm the identity of the machine. Please click or button to continue and avoid it from asking you again, click the ☒Don’t ask check box prior to clicking the or button.
A login window as shown below will open.
Enter your NetId in the username field and your CS Linux password in the password field and click the button. On a successful login, you will see a Linux Desktop.
Hints: to get a different Windows Manager, see Using Different Windows Manager with Remote Desktop section below. Mate or XFCE Desktop is recommended as it is faster and look familiar to MacOS or WindowsOS users.
C. Connecting to Windows Remote Desktop from LinuxOS
The best way to connect to iLab machines using is to use Remote Desktop Clients on Linux. There are plenty of RDP clients on Linux like Krdc, Remmina, FreeRDP and rdesktop (no longer updated). For this document, we will focus only on a program called: FreeRDP which is commonly installed on most Linux machines. Below is a simple example of command to use it but please see FreeRDP manual for complete info
1. Installing FreeRDP
If you are using your own Linux computer, you can install FreeRDP as follow:
To install rdesktop on RHEL/CentOS Linux, open a terminal and enter:
sudo yum install freerdp
To install rdesktop on Debian/Ubuntu Linux, open a terminal and enter:
sudo apt-get install freerdp2-x11
2. Using FreeRDP on RUNet or via University VPN
First establish your VPN connection by following VPN instruction. Once your VPN is established, you can open your RDP connection as follow:
xfreerdp /cert-ignore /v:ilab1.cs.rutgers.edu
3. Using FreeRDP via RDP Gateway
This method is a bit tricky since it requires one to login via a gateway before you can get into iLab machines. Because this app is run as a command line, and it requires your NetID password, it is best to set your NetID password as a variable in your bash shell to avoid escaping your password incase you have special character. We assume you are doing this in bash.
Step1. Set your NetID password as variable to be used later.
pw=’YourNetPassword!‘
Note: the password must be enclosed in single quote (‘) to avoid shell expansion.
Step 2: To connect, simply enter from a terminal
on CentOS7:
xfreerdp /g:rdgateway.rutgers.edu /gu:yourNetID /d:rad /gp:$pw ilab.cs.rutgers.edu
on Debian/Ubuntu 20.04:
xfreerdp /g:rdpgateway.rutgers.edu /gu:yourNetID /d:rad /gp:$pw /v:ilab1.cs.rutgers.edu
4. Connecting to iLab
Upon successful connection the following window will open a window below.
To login, Enter your NetID in the Username field and your CS Linux password in the password field. On a successful connection, you will see a Linux Desktop.
If you have issues, please consult FreeRDP manual for complete info.
D. Connecting to Windows Remote Desktop using a Browser
CS department maintains an Apache Guacamole gateway that allows you to get a graphical desktop on CS Linux system or Windows machine with Remote Desktop service enabled. This method doesn’t require you to install any client. It works in your browser. For more details, see Using CS WebLogin to Access iLab Machines
Note: The default screen size of your Remote Desktop session is set by the original size of your browser windows.
E. Using Different Windows Manager with Remote Desktop
On CS Ubuntu Linux machines, GNOME Windows Manager is set by default. On some situation GNOME may not work correctly or users prefer different Windows Manager like Mate, XFCE or KDE. Mate or XFCE is closer to WindowsOS/MacOS.
To switch to different Windows Manager, you will need to add .xsession file. To return back to Gnome, just remove .xsession file.
To pick specific Windows Manager, open a terminal session and type:
For Mate Windows Manager
echo "mate-session" > ~/.xsession
chmod +x ~/.xsession
for XFCE Windows Manager
echo "startxfce4" > ~/.xsession
chmod +x ~/.xsession
for KDE Windows Manager (note: iLab machines do not have KDE)
echo "startkde" > ~/.xsession
chmod +x ~/.xsession
Once you created the .xsession file, to activate the new window manager, logout and start a new Remote Connection.
F. Known issues & Solutions
- Sound does not work correctly. Restaring pulse audio via:
pulseaudio -kin terminal window may fix it. However this does not always work especially on Ubuntu 22 machine. Please use X2GO if you need sound. - If you have issue connecting to specific machine, report your problem so we can investigate but please use another machine right away and don’t delay to do your work. Possible Solutions:1. Change your Windows manager to Mate. See Section E. Using Different Windows Manager for details. Gnome, the default Windows manager is quite sensitive to error and may fail to start due to some configuration error in your .login and .bashrc or other issues.
2. Busy Lock file. Often problem on specific machine is due to busy/locked files in/run/user/$(id -u $USER)that needs to be remove or renamed. To avoid this problem, please logout from your session properly. Do not just close the window. - ThinClient drive or Folder Redirection is not supported due to incompatibility with Kerberos mounted home directory.
- For MacOSX Remote Desktop client, when user enters wrong NetID/Password combination, incomplete screen with missing text or fonts may be presented. Simply close that screen and start over.
- For MacOSX 10.15.6 (Catalina) users, if you have keyboard issues where control or special keys do not work, please update to MacOS X 10.15.6 supplemental update.
- Unless your computer operating system has problem, please hold on installing non essential updates to the latest version of Windows or MacOS until they are verified as safe by early adopters. This is to avoid issues with your machine you need for your class work. Recent Windows10 and Mac OS updates are full of problems. Emergency security updates are not affected by this as they are pushed by both Microsoft and Apple for immediate installation to your machines.
- Keyboard mapping issues with VMware is a known issue for many years. A recommended fix is to add to ~/.vmware/config this line
xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = "TRUE" - vscode has issue with keyboard control keys and binding. vscode is also not supported on CS Linux machines. If you use vscode, we can not support it when you have issues.
Important:
To avoid logging in issues in the future, which are normally related to locked/busy files from previous session, please logout from your session properly. Do not just close the window. Please look at figure on the right on how to logout.
This concludes Windows Remote Desktop documentation.
For help with our systems or If you need immediate assistant, visit LCSR Operator at CoRE 235 or call 848-445-2443. Otherwise, see CS HelpDesk. Don’t forget to include your NetID along with descriptions of your problem.