[CentOS] Workaround for (EL6.4) rdesktop-1.6.0-10 Woe

Thu Nov 7 19:41:45 UTC 2013
Cal Webster <cwebster at ec.rr.com>

On Thu, 2013-11-07 at 13:50 -0500, Fred Smith wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 07, 2013 at 10:51:48AM -0500, Cal Webster wrote:
> > rdesktop has been spewing error messages since the update to CentOS 6.4.
> > Aside from the continuous stream of errors in the terminal window from
> > which it was launched, there are a number of usability issues in the
> > remote session. The pointer does not change shape when moving over
> > various window components such as column separators, window borders,
> > etc. The background doesn't refresh within scroll bars, making it
> > difficult to tell where the scroll handle is. We've also found that MS
> > Visio will crash and hang the remote system if run within rdesktop.
> > Other strange phenomenon are also manifest in various applications. In
> > short, rdesktop 1.6.0-10 is buggy and unstable. See this upstream bug
> > report for more:
> > 
> > Bug 914279 - regression in 1.6.0-10.el6: Mousepointer and selections not
> > drawn properly
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=914279
> 
> there is a newer version upstream (meaning the author's web site), but
> I don't know if it solves these problems.
> 
> 1.8.0 is available from http://www.rdesktop.org/#download
> 
> I know, we all hate to override the package manager with un-packaged
> programs, but sometimes you just gotta.
> 

It quickly becomes impossible to manage anything more than a handful of
systems without a reliable package management system. Unmanaged apps
suck away valuable time. I'm sure the latest-and-greatest will make its
way into Fedora where a maintainer will re-package it into an RPM. For
now, I'm happy to rebuild the Fedora SRPM until and upstream (Red Hat)
SRPM is published. As I indicated, it's trivial to rebuild.