[X2Go-User] USB forwarding documentation

[Seth Galitzer]

On 11/07/2017 03:49 PM, Stefan Baur wrote:
> Am 07.11.2017 um 21:41 schrieb Seth Galitzer:
>> I'm calling xfreerdp from TCE to connect directly to the RDP server.
>> I've been trying to find the right cli options for xfreerdp to use for
>> this, but documentation is pretty light on this and I have yet to find
>> something that works.
>>
>> If I run dmesg on the thin client device from within the TCE desktop, I
>> can see that my flash drive is recognized, but it's not getting mounted.
>> That sounds like a udev issue within debian, but I was hoping somebody
>> on the list had already solved this problem.
> 
> So your actually have two problems:
> 1) getting the automounter to mount your flash drive.

I've found two ways to do this so far:
A) Install usbmount package (https://usbmount.alioth.debian.org/). I've 
tested this and it works, but needs some tweaking to produce a 
reliable/duplicatable mount point. This claims to work for vfat, ext* 
and hfs.

B) Configure udev to use pmount when a USB storage device is detected 
(https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/124060). I haven't tested this yet, 
but if the above option works, I'm guessing this is the manual 
implementation of it, so it should work.

> 2) getting xfreerdp to forward that mountpoint to the RDP server.

This is proving difficult if not impossible. Supposedly, some invocation 
of the /drive option should work, but I have not found good 
documentation on syntax, nor have suggestions I found so far worked. Use 
of the /usb option is not recommended as supposedly this is for 
redirecting devices, such as printers or HID. There is even much 
discussion among freerdp devs and users on how to properly implement 
this functionality.

For now, I'm telling my users it's not doable, but I'm still looking for 
a way to do it. Suggestions are welcome.

> You could try to research them independently. Let's start with 2): How
> about running xfreerdp on a Linux "fat client", and tinkering with its
> cli options until you get it to forward a local directory?
> 
> Regarding 1): Funny coincidence, I was trying out the usb mass storage
> automounter today and realized that in its current incarnation, it can
> only handle VFAT - not ext*-formatted media.
> I'm planning to improve the code in question $SOON, but at the moment, I
> would suggest double-checking that your flash drive is in VFAT format.
> 
> Kind Regards,
> Stefan Baur
> 

Thanks.
Seth


-- 
Seth Galitzer
Systems Coordinator
Computer Science Department
Kansas State University
http://www.cs.ksu.edu/~sgsax
sgsax at ksu.edu
785-532-7790