[GUACAMOLE-1336] adding support for connecting to RDP admin/console session

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Trivial
• Resolution: Invalid
• Affects Version/s: 1.3.0, 1.4.0
• Component/s: guacamole, guacamole-server, RDP
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Christoph
• Created: 30/Apr/21 08:51
• Updated: 30/Apr/21 09:32
• Resolved: 30/Apr/21 09:26

Description

Hi,Hi,
 The windows rdp client does allow to connect to the 2 built in server rdp "console" sessions without requiring to have RDP "CAL"-licenses, which is especially relevant in Terminal Server situations.  

 

The real problems arises when one tries to connect to a specific terminal server in an terminal server cluster, because in this case the connection is made to a random server, not the one specified.

 

This does not happen when the /admin switch in mstsc.exe is used.  

Ive taken a look and freerdp has the ability to specify /admin too:  

In FreeRDP\client\common\cmdline.c there is this block:  

CommandLineSwitchCase(arg, "admin")  
{  
   settings->ConsoleSession = enable;  
}

Unfortunately guacamole does currently not have the ability to pass this flag before it calls freerdp_context_new.

I think it could just be added here  https://github.com/apache/guacamole-server/blob/master/src/protocols/rdp/rdp.c 

 
  freerdp* rdp_inst = freerdp_new();   
  rdp_inst->PreConnect = rdp_freerdp_pre_connect;  
  rdp_inst->Authenticate = rdp_freerdp_authenticate;  
+ rdp_inst ->settings-> ConsoleSession  = settings->console_session; 

 which of course would require to add console_session to guac_rdp_settings which in turn requires persisting the setting and even worse, extending the java user interface which is just beyond by abilities ...