Who is using Teradici Ultra?

Flame Tools and Tech
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Hi friends,

We are based on RGS here, but after months of going back and forth with RGS team trying to get things fixed, each subsequent version and custom build I get is worse than the last. I don’t see RGS as being a viable solution moving forward. So I’m looking to chat with people regarding their experiences with Teradici Ultra software.

Thanks,
Alan

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@panisset you been able to give Teragucci Ultra a test drive yet?

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I’ve had PCoIP Graphics Agent working with Flame on Linux with no significant issues, with the caveat that you must be running CentOS 7.6 or newer, as the Graphics Agent will not work with previous versions of CentOS (fortunately the in-place upgrade script from the DKU to update from CentOS 7.2 or 7.4 to 7.6 works well). It works much better than the legacy hardware Remote Workstation Card. A few caveats:

  • when the Graphics Agent is running, the X server only starts when someone connects to the machine, so it makes it a bit trickier if you want to switch between remote access and local console , it’s not transparent (you need to use systemctl to stop and disable pcoip, then enable and start kdm / gdm)
  • the (optionally enabled) PCoIP Ultra protocol (required to leverage GPU / AVX2 acceleration, or UHD monitor access) doesn’t work with the PCoIP Software Client on M1 Macs (it is still an Intel binary running under Rosetta 2, and Rosetta 2 doesn’t support AVX2 instructions), or with “legacy” ZeroClients

But otherwise it works quite well, and the “no VPN required” access to the Graphics Agent is really great, makes it a lot easier to onboard remote artists when they don’t need a VPN client setup. HP recently published a document on upcoming changes to RGS / Z Boost licensing which states in particular that RGS / ZBost Central will no longer be bundled with HP Z workstations after 2022.

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Hi JF @panisset

I did not know about the changes to Z Central licensing. Thanks for that. Seems like RGS is basically being abandoned.
Can you please elaborate on “no VPN required”.
In Teradici Ultra, does wacom swipe down on bottom on screen in Batch work in Flame proper. It does not in Z RGS.
In Teradici Ultra, do all Flame hotkeys work properly?
We really like how RGS keeps the local display working as our people mix remote and in-office without notification, and I never have to worry about intervening.
We also really like the collaboration mode in RGS. I don’t see that Teradici has an equivalent.
Do you run multiple monitors with Teradici? We do with RGS and it works smoothly.
Is it accurate that Teradici only works with the Intuos Pro tablets? We are exclusively on the generation before that.
Audio works well with Flame?

Thanks.

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No VPN required: the Cloud Access Connector is the broker that connects clients to machines, based on assignments in the CAS Manager (which you can run on-prem, or use the SaaS version, no additional licenses required on top of the per-connection licenses). The CAC supports a Gateway functionality which lets you expose specific ports through your firewall, allowing external connection without VPN (the CAC uses AD for authentication, and can be configured for MFA as well).

Wacom swipes: I’m not a Flame user myself, but I’ve not heard of issues with Wacom swipes. Also if you configure it correctly (it can be a bit tricky), there are no cross-platform restrictions on pressure sensitivity (I think that may still be an issue with RGS?).

Hotkeys: it can be a bit of a struggle to disable all the local hotkey processing when running the Software Client on macOS, but once you do so I believe you can get most (all?) of the expected hotkeys in Flame.

Dual monitors are supported, and if you are running the Ultra protocol, up to UHD resolution is supported.

Teradici does publish a list of supported tablets. It’s a bit tricky to keep track of it:

  • it depends on the platform on which you are running the client (Windows / macOS / Linux)
  • it depends on whether you are using the tablet in local termination mode (best for higher latency environments, but no support for pressure sensitivity), or in bridged mode, where the tablet is connected “directly” to the host as if on a USB extender with full functionality, but probably won’t be fun over 20msec of network latency.

It can be a bit fiddly to get tablets “just right”, and it’s probably best to have recent models like the PTH-660.

Audio is supported in Flame via the PulseAudio device, or presumably if you are using NDI to stream the broadcast monitor separately.

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Can confirm that once in USB bridge mode, all keyboard Hotkeys work well. And swipes are good as well. This is from my experience working at the facilities where a certain someone has sprinkled his magic IT fairy dust.

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Thanks for all the good info. The one issue we would have, is that our authentication is done by FreeIPA and not AD.

Do you know if the port for the agent can be remapped? I think with the hardware card it was fixed.

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I believe that Teradici’s position is that they only support authenticating against AD, you may want to ask in the #discuss-dr channel on the SSA Slack if anyone has made it work with FreeIPA, I’ve not seen any way to configure the LDAP schema used by the CAC. As for the specific ports for PCoIP (TCP and UDP), I think those are fixed.

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Hi everyone,

I finally got a trial of Teradici running. Ultra mode is way better image and performance than RGS, but pretty much everything else about Teradici stinks.

  1. the “user environment” is different than standard login. The shell is bash instead of the normal tcsh, certain custom environment variables aren’t being loaded as they do with normal login. RGS handles this perfectly, and it just is my machine.

I’ve set pcoip.desktop_session = gnome and while that gets to the proper Desktop the variables and shell are still missing. Like Teradici is side stepping normal login process.

  1. inability to alt-tab on the remote machine. Doing this action just alt-tabs on the receiver machine. RGS handles this perfectly.

  2. Certain UI items (menus/icons) are like 300% blown up even though the overall resolution is UHD. RGS handles this perfectly again, and it just is my machine.

If it wasn’t for the superior image of Teradici I wouldn’t even mess with it, but its hard to keep slogging thru with RGS mush image.

Any thoughts on the above issues would be great.

Thanks,
Alan

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User environment: indeed you want to set pcoip.desktop_session in /etc/pcoip-agent/pcoip-agent.conf to pick the session the Graphics Agent will create when you connect. For a Flame on CentOS 7.6, that would be:

pcoip.desktop_session=“kde-plasma”

and on CentOS 8.2, it would be:

pcoip.desktop_session=“gnome”

This is documented in the man page for pcoip-agent.conf and you can specify any session type that exists in /usr/share/xsessions/

The thing to keep in mind is that the Graphics Agent is acting as the X Display Manager, but since it keeps graphics off until a connection is established, there’s no way to pick a “session type” the way you can in some X Display Managers with a session type popup, so pcoip-agent.conf is the way to do that.

For Alt-Tab / Cmd-Tab propagation: this behavior changed when Teradici released the Graphics Agent for macOS. Just like when you use macOS “Connect to Server”, it’s somewhat ambiguous whether you want Cmd-Tab to go to the local machine or the remote machine. I agree that the new default behavior of always passing Alt-Tab/Cmd-Tab to the remote machine is annoying (especially when you don’t have Graphics Agent running on macOS hosts), but it can be overridden from the command line or via a plist:

https://www.teradici.com/web-help/pcoip_client/mac/21.07/configuration/customizable_session_features/#pcoip-client-keyboard-handling

Don’t want to sound like a shill for Teradici, but a couple of other plusses:

  • cross platform support for tablet pressure sensitivity (that used to not be supported by RGS, maybe it is these days)
  • security gateway functionality allows secure VPN-less connections, including support for MFA

And a minus: lack of support for Graphics Agent on M1 Mac systems, and no support for PCoIP Ultra on the Software Client when running on M1 Macs (it’s still an Intel binary running under Rosetta 2, and Rosetta 2 doesn’t support the Intel AVX-2 instructions that Ultra needs).

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I do have pcoip.desktop_session=“gnome” in the config file (without the paranthesis). I don’t understand why it is switching our user shells to bash from tcsh.

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Hmm, I’ve not seen that myself, and that’s really weird, since the user shell is specified in /etc/passwd, and shouldn’t depend on the X session… Although apparently the Gnome Terminal lets you override the default shell, so maybe there’s some funky Gnome Terminal config file somewhere that’s being picked up when the Gnome session is started by the Graphics Agent? I’m not super familiar with the Gnome preferences system, so no idea where that would be stored.

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Actually I misread this, I thought you said that the shell was being switched from bash to tcsh, but in your case, it’s the opposite, you want tcsh, but are getting bash instead. Where are your users and their default shell defined, locally in /etc/passwd, or centrally in AD via sssd, and if so do you have the shell defined in AD using RFC2307 extensions?

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used ULTRA vs RGS on the same machine , Ultra was way better, but we also used the CAC and stuff.

There are some odd requirements for ULTRA receivers though, I cant fully get it together but something like you need quicksync on the client to use GPU acceleration, Nvidia wouldnt work (so professional CPUs without a built in intel GPU wouldnt work) something like that, the documentation is utter garbage also.

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Hi JFP,

We use FreeIPA, which works perfectly outside of Teradici.

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Hi Finn,

Ultra picture quality is excellent, but everything else about Teradici stinks compared to RGS.
Lenovo P330 Tiny is best of both worlds, has iGPU with QuickSync and NVIDIA P620.

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I think we decided on igel thinclients for some reason