Remote Desktop Connection

Remote Desktop Connection allows you to connect to a windows system and display a full graphical desktop just like sitting in front of the actual machine. The desktop is shown in a window on the local machine, although all the applications run on the remote system. In some respects it is similar to the X-Windows system on Unix but uses a different network protocol known as RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol).

The department provides some multi-user servers (terminal servers) which anyone can use to run windows applications. It is also possible to connect to ordinary windows desktops if they are suitably configured although in this case access from the internet must be through a gateway system to ensure that the desktops are protected from attack from the internet. Please see the notes on how to connect via the Physics gateway near the bottom of this page . 

You may print on to your local home printer while connected via a remote desktop connection.

There are several Terminal Servers in Physics:

Primary Terminal Server

• TermservQC.physics.ox.ac.uk is the main Physics Terminal Server. The server is a Dell Power Edge 2950 with 2 Quad Core Processors and 16GB of RAM. It can support a significant amount of concurrent users. The server is running Windows 2003 x64 SP2.
• List of applications installed on termservqc.

Secondary Terminal Server

• Termservla.physics.ox.ac.uk is now the secondary Physics Terminal Server. This is a Lenovo Desktop with a single Quad Desktop core processor running at 2.4GHz. Please use this server if TERMSERVQC is unavailable. The server is running Windows 2003 x32 SP2.

Physics Teaching Course Terminal Server

• Heisenberg64.physics.ox.ac.uk is the Windows 2008 Terminal Server for the Physics Teaching course. The server is manufactured by Transtec and has 2 Quad Core processors and 8GB of RAM and is only available for use by Under Graduates on the Teaching course. Please contact Peter Shrimpton if you would like further information about this service.

Physics Terminal Server General Usage Notes

• Please remember that you are sharing a system with a number of users. CPU intensive tasks should not be run on the Physics Terminal Server.
• When you log into Termservqc you will not receive the same settings ( desktop \ printer setup ) as you do when you log into your Centrally Managed Windows desktop. The server has been configured in this way as many users of Termservmp weren't able to log in as they saved too much data into their windows profile. Please see profile quota for further details.
• Do not try and install software on the terminal severs. You do not have the necessary rights to do this and you may cause the server to be taken offline to be repaired.
• If you require software to be installed on the Terminal Servers then please email ITsupport@physics.ox.ac.uk

• Acrobat Professional still doesn’t create PDF documents reliably on the TERMINAL SERVERS so if you need to generate a PDF document from a Microsoft application then please use the save as PDF option in Office 2007 ( on Termservqc ).

Connecting from Windows

Connecting from Windows is made possible with Microsoft's Remote Desktop Client which is installed by default with all recent versions of windows. Clients for older versions are still available from Microsoft. This client provides the most functionality, allowing disk drives and printers to be mapped from your client into the remote desktop server so it's much easier to transfer files and to print from your remote applications to your local printers .

To improve security and allow connections to all desktops on our local network, clients should be configured to connect via the gateway system. When using the windows Remote Desktop Client, it is easy to configure this so that the connection through the gateway is transparent. You'll find the Remote desktop client under the 'start/all programs' folders or below that in `accessories` (depending on the version that's installed). Start the client and and click on the `Options` button and the following should appear

Here, this has been set to connect to a desktop system using a physics network account.

Now click on the `advanced` tab. You should see a section entitled `Connect from Anywhere`. Click on the settings button and fill in the fields as follows

 

The configuration is for the case where you will log into the remote server using your physics network credentials. If you need to use a local account on the remote server then please untick the box at the bottom. Click OK etc to return to the General page and save your configuration so that you dont need to do this setup for each session.

Connecting from Mac

Microsoft produces a native Remote Desktop client for Macs. This can be used to connect to any of the mutli-user terminal servers but the current version doesn't support the access to desktops via the rdp gateway. It is relatively easy to work around this by making a connection via the ssh-gateway, vpn server or by first making a remote desktop connection to termservQC and making the connection to your desktop from there. More information will be provided shortly, otherwise contact IT support if you trouble getting this going.

Connecting from Unix / Linux

RDesktop is an open-source Remote Desktop client that provides most of the functionality of Microsoft's Windows client. It is already installed on most Linux machines in the department. Access to desktops from outside of the department requires teh same kind of setup as explained in the `Connecting From Mac` section.