rdesktop is a client for Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), used in a num‐
ber of Microsoft products including Windows NT Terminal Server, Windows
2000 Server, Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server.
-u
Username for authentication on the server.
-d
Domain for authentication.
-s
Startup shell for the user - starts a specific application in‐
stead of Explore. If SeamlessRDP is enabled this is the appli‐
cation which i started in seamless mode.
-c
The initial working directory for the user. Often used in com‐
bination with -s to set up a fixed login environment.
-p
The password to authenticate with. Note that this may have no
effect if "Always prompt for password" is enabled on the server.
WARNING: if you specify a password on the command line it may be
visible to other users when they use tools like ps. Use -p - to
make rdesktop request a password at startup (from standard in‐
put).
-n
Client hostname. Normally rdesktop automatically obtains the
hostname of the client.
-k
Keyboard layout to emulate. This requires a corresponding
keymap file to be installed. The standard keymaps provided with
rdesktop follow the RFC1766 naming scheme: a language code fol‐
lowed by a country code if necessary - e.g. en-us, en-gb, de,
fr, sv, etc.
The default keyboard map depends on the current locale (LC_* and
LANG environment variables). If the current locale is unknown,
the default keyboard map is en-us (a US English keyboard).
The keyboard maps are file names, which means that they are case
sensitive. The standard keymaps are all in lowercase.
The keyboard maps are searched relative to the directories
$HOME/.rdesktop/keymaps, KEYMAP_PATH (specified at build time),
and $CWD/keymaps, in this order. The keyboard-map argument can
also be an absolute filename.
The special value `none' can be used instead of a keyboard map.
In this case, rdesktop will guess the scancodes from the X11
event key codes using an internal mapping method. This method
only supports the basic alphanumeric keys and may not work prop‐
erly on all platforms so its use is discouraged.
-g
Desktop geometry (WxH). If geometry is the special word
"workarea", the geometry will be fetched from the extended win‐
dow manager hints property _NET_WORKAREA, from the root window.
The geometry can also be specified as a percentage of the whole
screen, e.g. "-g 80%".
If the specified geometry depends on the screen size, and the
screen size is changed, rdesktop will automatically reconnect
using the new screen size. This requires that rdesktop has been
compiled with RandR support.
-i Use password as smartcard pin. If a valid user certificate is
matched in smart card reader the password passed with p argument
is used as pin for the smart card. This feature also requires
that smart card redirection is used using r scard argument.
-f Enable fullscreen mode. This overrides the window manager and
causes the rdesktop window to fully cover the current screen.
Fullscreen mode can be toggled at any time using Ctrl-Alt-Enter.
-b Force the server to send screen updates as bitmaps rather than
using higher-level drawing operations.
-t Disable use of remote control. This will disable features like
seamless connection sharing.
-A
Enable SeamlessRDP by specifying the path to seamless rdp shell.
In this mode, rdesktop creates a X11 window for each window on
the server side. This mode requires the SeamlessRDP server side
component, which is available from http://www.cendio.com/seam‐
lessrdp/.
When using this option, you should normally specify a startup
shell which launches the desired application through Seamless‐
RDP.
Example: rdesktop -A 'c:\seamlessrdp\seamlessrdpshell.exe' -s
'notepad' mywts.domain.com
Any subsequential call to the above commandline example will
make use of the seamless connection sharing feature which spawns
another notepad in the current connection to the specified
server and then exit.
-B Use the BackingStore of the Xserver instead of the integrated
one in rdesktop.
-e Disable encryption. This option is only needed (and will only
work) if you have a French version of NT TSE.
-E Disable encryption from client to server. This sends an en‐
crypted login packet, but everything after this is unencrypted
(including interactive logins).
-m Do not send mouse motion events. This saves bandwidth, although
some Windows applications may rely on receiving mouse motion.
-C Use private colourmap. This will improve colour accuracy on an
8-bit display, but rdesktop will appear in false colour when not
focused.
-D Hide window manager decorations, by using MWM hints.
-K Do not override window manager key bindings. By default rdesk‐
top attempts to grab all keyboard input when it is in focus.
-S
