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Re: I need an RDP guru - trying to use nested RDP sessions

2-Nov-23 6:30

This sort of used to work. I support a customer who has gone completely anal on security (all it takes is one hack I guess). Anyway, they moved the server to inside of an ultra secure facility, and network restrictions are to the extreme. This is all on their internal network AND behind their firewall - nevertheless... I used to be able to login to their VPN and RDP from my laptop to the server but no more.

Now, I login to their VPN, RDP to the "jump server" - a machine that is open for these connections. This jump server is heavily restricted to talk to a limited # of other servers. I then RDP from the jump server to the production server - this is what I mean by nested.

I need to be able to navigate between each RDP session. It used to be that I could slide the RDP title bar to the left or right but this seems to have disappeared. Any hints or wisdom?

Charlie Gilley

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759

Has never been more appropriate.

charlieg2-Nov-23 6:52

Re: I need an RDP guru - trying to use nested RDP sessions

2-Nov-23 6:52

Okay, mystery one solved. The first session's menu bar was hiding itself. I managed to click the pin that had it pegged. Jeesh. Intuitive? Nope. Guess I need more rounded icons.

Charlie Gilley

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759

Has never been more appropriate.

Eddy Vluggen2-Nov-23 6:53

Eddy Vluggen

2-Nov-23 6:53

charlieg wrote:
This is all on their internal network AND behind their firewall - nevertheless... I used to be able to login to their VPN and RDP from my laptop to the server but no more.

Their choice, their problem Smile | :)

Maybe invest into having RDP tunnels over the Onion framework using NordVPN? Ofcourse, NordVPN is owned by the CIA, so you need to build your own alternative. Paranoia is ok, as is realism Smile | :)

Bastard Programmer from Hell Suspicious | :suss:

"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.

Re: I need an RDP guru - trying to use nested RDP sessions

charlieg2-Nov-23 7:41

Re: I need an RDP guru - trying to use nested RDP sessions

2-Nov-23 7:41

NordVPN is owned by the CIA? wtf? Seriously? Smile | :)

And yes, their problem. It's a total fluster cluck. I can't even ping anything. They won't open anything up for testing, etc. Going to double my rate.

Charlie Gilley

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759

Has never been more appropriate.

Nelek2-Nov-23 10:03

Nelek

2-Nov-23 10:03

charlieg wrote:
Going to double my rate.

M.D.V.

If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
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Re: I need an RDP guru - trying to use nested RDP sessions

Jeremy Falcon2-Nov-23 7:02

Jeremy Falcon

2-Nov-23 7:02

If I'm being real, having a DMZ or a jump box is not a bad thing at all. Never really seen anyone do that over RDP twice though. In theory you'd only have to RDP to the jump box and do any admin via PowerShell, etc. to the actual machine(s). But, whatever floats their boat I guess. Laugh | :laugh:

Just want to point out that as DMZ isn't a bad thing. In the *nix world at least, hopping around servers in a session is very common.

Jeremy Falcon

Re: I need an RDP guru - trying to use nested RDP sessions

charlieg2-Nov-23 7:54

Re: I need an RDP guru - trying to use nested RDP sessions

2-Nov-23 7:54

I'm okay with that. DMZs are good. The internet is completely out of control and 99.99999999% of the people have no clue. The ones that do work for the NSA and Russian hackers Smile | :)

Charlie Gilley

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759

Has never been more appropriate.

Nelek2-Nov-23 10:10

Nelek

2-Nov-23 10:10

There are a couple of ways...
I used to reduce the resolution to make it a bit smaller than my laptop monitor, then you have two windows. The only annoying thing is that the keyboard shortcuts can act weird depending where the focus is.

Another option is, if you have more than one monitor, to set the first RDP to use all monitors and the second one to use only one monitor.

Sharing information / files from one to the other one, can still be a PITA.

Oh, btw. There was (not sure if still is) a very annoying (and even dangerous) bug back then. Multiple users RDPing in a server would get cross-clipboard. That means, the text I copied could be pasted by you in an editor. That provoked a couple of "funny" situations in our routinary work.

M.D.V.

Re: I need an RDP guru - trying to use nested RDP sessions

charlieg2-Nov-23 11:15

Re: I need an RDP guru - trying to use nested RDP sessions

2-Nov-23 11:15

Oh pray do tell Smile | :)

Charlie Gilley

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759

Has never been more appropriate.

StarNamer@work2-Nov-23 15:08

StarNamer@work

2-Nov-23 15:08

I do a similar thing, but, instead of RDP over RDP, I have RDCMAN installed on the machine I RDP into. There's then no confusion over which system I'm controlling and I don't need to worry about hitting the right control title bar thing.

It might be overkill for connecting to a single server, but since, at the last count, the list of servers I need to connect to was well over 100, it's useful for me to have a single tool where I can group servers, switch easily between them, start sessions on all nodes of a cluster or all servers running a particular service, etc.

Of course, you may not be able to have it installed on the "jump" server.

Note that our network also has restrictions, so while the PC I RDP to can connect to a large number of servers, the PC in front of me, connected via VPN, has a much more restricted set that it can access.

Re: I need an RDP guru - trying to use nested RDP sessions

englebart4-Nov-23 4:57

englebart

4-Nov-23 4:57

Run the first session full screen (or windowed almost to full screen) and the nested sessions windowed slightly smaller.

Move the taskbar on each layer to a different side of the “monitor”

Workstation: Bottom taskbar
Jump Server: Left taskbar
DMZ Servers: Right taskbar

We do similar things where each login is a different userid. I prefer windowed at each layer so my password manager/powershell script can send the untypable, constantly-rotating passwords to the lock screens. Running in full screen blocks “send keys” functionality.

What's worse than...

dandy722-Nov-23 5:27

2-Nov-23 5:27

...not knowing your CPU's core temperature?

Having two utilities that read it, and display wildly different results.

I might as well not know at all.

Richard Deeming2-Nov-23 5:33

Richard Deeming

2-Nov-23 5:33

Assuming they're both using the same units (°C vs °F vs °K), get a third utility so you can find out which one is correct.

Of course, if the third utility displays yet another wildly different temperature, then you're stuffed. Laugh | :laugh:

"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer

Nelek2-Nov-23 5:36

Nelek

2-Nov-23 5:36

Richard Deeming wrote:
Of course, if the third utility displays yet another wildly different temperature

Average? Median? Roll eyes | :rolleyes:

M.D.V.

Richard Deeming2-Nov-23 5:42

Richard Deeming

2-Nov-23 5:42

Does the wisdom of crowds[^] apply to buggy hardware monitoring utilities? Big Grin | :-D

"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer

dandy722-Nov-23 5:52

2-Nov-23 5:52

See the XKCD comic about having 14 standards. Smile | :)

Richard Andrew x642-Nov-23 5:41

Richard Andrew x64

2-Nov-23 5:41

May I ask which CPU you're talking about? And what chipset?

The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.

dandy722-Nov-23 6:03

2-Nov-23 6:03

Sure. The machine is an antique at this point, it's an Acer Aspire easyStore H340 - shipped with Windows Home Server (so, 2007 or so!), which has been repurposed and running Windows 7 essentially as a headless NAS. Still works great for the job that's been assigned to it, so I've never looked into replacing it.

Core Temp reports the CPU as an Intel Atom (Diamondville), socket 437 (FCBGA437).

Open Hardware Monitor reports it as an Intel Atom 230.

Core Temp reports the temperature floating around 67C.

Open Hardware Monitor says 32C.

jschell3-Nov-23 5:22

jschell

3-Nov-23 5:22

dandy72 wrote:
... around 67C...says 32C.

You should be able to use your hand to figure out which of those is right. Hopefully the second.

Presuming that there is only one temperature sensor and if the same utility keeps getting it wrong then discard it.

Of course if there are two sensors then one of those could be bad.

dandy723-Nov-23 5:42

3-Nov-23 5:42

jschell wrote:
You should be able to use your hand to figure out which of those is right.

True.

What I prefer with Open Hardware Monitor is that it writes its data to WMI, which I then read back with another tool to display a graph of temperature over time (and combine with the same data from other systems). Core Temp only exports its data to a log file (although I could still work with that if I really, really wanted to)...

But if the data's inaccurate, being able to plot pretty graphs with it is kinda useless. Smile | :)

Christian Graus2-Nov-23 7:38

Christian Graus

2-Nov-23 7:38

This is why single source of data is important. If you have two sources of truth, what if they don't agree?

dandy722-Nov-23 9:21

2-Nov-23 9:21

I've always said, if I have a watch, I can probably tell you the time. If I have two watches...I'll be less certain of the accuracy of my response.