Best password managers for Mac. Or even pass away, then your family will be given access to your account. With the macOS client being free and mobiles costing £9.99 each for a lifetime.
Active1 year, 3 months ago
I haven't been able to find any documentation that would indicate this is possible, but is there any way to pass the hostname you'd like to connect to as a command-line argument to Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection for Mac?
Some background info for those interested:
I'm a systems administrator, and I'm in the process of moving to a MacBook Air as my primary work computer from a Windows 7 laptop. I frequently use Remote Desktop Client to connect to servers, and in Windows, I use Launchy as my keyboard launcher. I've assigned 'rdp' as a keyword so when I invoke Launchy, type 'rdp {tab} servername' it passes the text after the tab key as the hostname to mstsc.exe (i.e., mstsc.exe /v:servername). This results in the remote desktop client opening a session to the hostname specified.
Vpn Client For Mac
billcbillc
7 Answers
There is no command line access for the Microsoft Remote Desktop Client. But the free and most excellent CoRD remote desktop client does handle
rdp:// links which would let you call it from a launcher of your choice or even via open on the command line.
The CoRD documentation on github lays out how you can use URL encoded parameters to open full-configured RDP sessions.
rdp:// URL syntax
CoRD handles rdp:// URLs, which you can use from many places inside OS X. Unfortunately, there is no way to extend Finder's 'Connect to Server' dialog, which supports launching VNC URLs, so we can't launch CoRD from there. If Apple changes this (or if anybody is aware of a way to extend it) we would love to hear about it.
Saved Servers
If you want to use
rdp:// urls with existing saved servers, you can (as of 0.5.3)! Just use the label in place of a hostname:
open rdp://label
New Servers
From a shell (using Terminal):
open rdp://hostname
Curse Client For Mac
Additional parameters can be used to start a fully-configured session via the URL:
open rdp://[username[:password]@]hostname[:port][/domain][?parameters]
The following parameters can be set for the session via a query string (as of 0.5.2):
Email Client For Mac
Example
open rdp://jsmith:[email protected]/BigCoDomain?screendepth###24&consoleSession###true&themes###false&screenWidth###1280&screenHeight###800
Note:
When using ampersands (&) from the command line, they have to be escaped with a backslash (). Colons (:) can be used in place of ampersands for the same effect, without needing to be escaped.
Passwords with any special characters in them, @, :, &, etc need to be encoded according to the URL Encoding Format
Command Line Use
CoRD supports the following command line options: -host -port -u -d -p -a [8|16|24|32] set screen depth -width set screen resolution width -height set screen resolution height
Example
/Applications/CoRD.app/Contents/MacOS/CoRD -host example.com -port 3389 -u username
Caveats
Launching CoRD from the command line this way causes a fresh instance of CoRD to be opened. One symptom of this is multiple Dock icons. This overrides or decreases the effectiveness of many of CoRD strong points, including unified sessions, etc. For that reason, we recommend using the open command, and rdp:// URLs to launch sessions.
Ian C.♦Ian C.
36.3k2525 gold badges135135 silver badges213213 bronze badges
I don't love CoRD. It works, but it seems to flake out periodically. I made my own CLI script for Microsoft RDP. I created a sed+open bash script to make it possible to pass 2 arguments to Microsoft Remote Desktop Client. I can pass a host name, and I can throw a switch to connect to the console of Server 2003 hosts.
I know this could be taken further. For Example:
Here is how I did it:
Contents of my bash script:
Alias added to .bash_profile
(This assumes my rdp.sh script file is in my home directory, ~/ )
Make the script executable:
Run the script:
Here is an example that includes the console switch. I left a debugging line in the script that shows what is going to be sed'd into the t.rdp file.
LeviLevi
I don't know when this changed, but the Microsoft Remote Desktop Client does handle rdp:// links now:
Microsoft Remote Desktop uses the URI scheme rdp://query_string to store pre-configured attribute settings that are used when launching the client. The query strings represent a single or set of RDP attributes provided in the URL. The RDP attributes are separated by the ampersand symbol (&).
For example, when connecting to a PC, the string is:
rdp://full%20address=s:mypc:3389&audiomode=i:2&disable%20themes=i:1
All the attributes are documented on the Remote Desktop Client URI Scheme Support TechNet page.
Best Email Client For MacJack DouglasJack Douglas
18611 gold badge22 silver badges1010 bronze badges
Well, after consulting my Microsoft TAM, I've found that there is no way to pass a hostname to the Microsoft client via the command line.
CoRD, on the other hand, can actually do what I'd like by handling rdp:// links. After installing CoRD, if you type
in Terminal or iTerm2, it will open a session to the host servername within CoRD.
I use Alfred (http://www.alfredapp.com/) as my 'Launchy' alternative on Mac, having just discovered it after being a longtime user of Quicksilver. I bought the Powerpack for Alfred, which allows you to use a number of extensions, one of which give it the ability to launch shell scripts. So I created a shell script extension, assigned the keyword rdp, set it to 'required parameter', and set the script to:
This allows me to invoke alfred, and type rdp {tab} servername {return} to open a Remote Desktop Connection session to the remote server.
billcbillc
The script above doesn't work with the latest 'Microsoft Remote Desktop'. Referencing the application with a variable was problematic so I hard coded the path (which is different from the original example). I also needed to remove the '--args' parameter and it started to work.
William WallaceWilliam Wallace
So this is mostly to flesh out other answers and avoid scripting hacks:
(TL;DR: may have not been true before, but Microsoft's RDP now handles .rdp files automatically with
open )
I have a lot of profiles already stored in the RDP GUI. (BTW, the plist is
~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.rdc.mac/Data/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.rdc.mac.plist , as always plutil -convert xml1 xyz.list for human viewing)
(Further reference: https://macmule.com/2013/10/22/how-to-create-a-microsoft-remote-desktop-8-connection/)
To make it commandlineable:
BaseZenBaseZen
I think it would be just as easy to make a template for each server you want to connect to, as well as one with an empty server field for those 'once in a lifetime' connections.I just pop them in a folder and either name or number them to get the order right. Drag the folder to the dock and I have a spot I can click to get a quick list of the rdp templates which I can then just single-click to connect.Or I can Command+Space and type in the name of the file and press enter to run it.OR YOU CAN TYPEY TYPEY TYPEY TYPE and install all kinds of management apps.
Randy TravisRandy Travis
You must log in to answer this question.Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged remote-desktop .Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |