Monday, March 30, 2009

Ubuntu Terminal Services Client Clipboard Support

Using Ubuntu's "Terminal Server Client" is a great tool for anybody that needs to use VNC or RDP to work on remote machines. It is a nice interface, and has a handy "quick connect" feature that allows you to rapidly connect to a pre-saved server.

I use it extensively to remote control various Windows servers on my work network.

The problem for me has been that clipboard copying and pasting has not worked for me using this tool.

After some digging I found that by editing my rdp files in ~\.tsclient\ and changing the protocol line to:

protocol:i:4

would get the clipboard working on my quick connect entries.

This only works on RDP connections, obviously not VNC ones, but it is very handy.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

AWESOME!! Thank you so much :)

Note: If you copy something to clipboard BEFORE opening your terminal client, it won't work. Don't copy anything until you have your RDP client open already!

Thanks again! You saved my ass.

gag_72 said...

Thanks, a first result on google too. Thanks a lot.

Jim said...

thanks gag, I didn't know I would ever show high on any google search. Wow, I guess I'm a big deal now.

meshtalk said...

Doesn't work !!

I had to create a .rdp file and then edit the protocol as you mentioned.

.tsclient has two files by default -
last.tsc
mru.tsc

I created another one-
set.rdp

Modified the protocol in both set.rdp and last.tsc

Now, I try to Copy from my XP system to Jaunty or vice-versa and unfortunately nothing seems to work.

Let me know if I'm doing something wrong.

Thanks

Jim said...

@RJ

I've verified that this does in fact work on Jaunty.

My guess is that you are connecting to your remote machine by using the connect button. This will start a session using the info shown in the "Logon Settings" portion of the window.

What you want to do is use the "quick connect" drop down menu to choose your connection. This menu shows you the RDP files that you have saved in your .tsclient folder. Launching this way should then use the settings specified in your RDP file, and give you the clip board functionality you are looking for.

If that is not the case then I'm not sure what to tell you...

SPS said...

It works for me (ubuntu 9.04 to XP Pro on TSC).

To the guy saying it doesn't work, try pasting to gedit or a similar simple text editor before copy and pasting to TSC.

When I try to CNP direct from Intellij it fails.

Unknown said...

Thanks so much for this post. Worked perfectly for me.

Anonymous said...

Works like a chime. This is awesome thanks for posting the tip!!!

Ram said...

YOu are a rockstar. I tried to search about this issue before but i did not hit on a solution. This has been bugging me for a while. Finally your suggestion helped me to solve it. Thankkk youuuu so mucccchhhhhh