How to connect to a departmental Windows PC from an external Linux PC

You can not connect directly to a PC on the departmental network from a PC outside of the UCL network. You have a couple of ways that you can connect.

Connecting via UCL VPN

This is a simpler process to follow, and it has the benefit of also giving you access to other UCL internal facilities (access to journals, etc). ISD provide UCL VPN instructions for Linux, but Linux is not a supported platform.

If you are able to connect to the UCL VPN you should be able to use the xfreerdp application form the freerdp package:

xfreerdp -d EE -u USERID HOSTNAME.ee.ucl.ac.uk

Make sure you replace "USERID" with your actual userid and replace "HOSTNAME" with the hostname of the machine you want to connect to.

Using an SSH Tunnel

If you cannot use the UCL VPN you can setup an SSH Tunnel to allow you to connect to a departmental Windows PC via RDP. From your linux PC, you can setup the tunnel with a command similar to:

ssh -L 13389:windowspc.ee.ucl.ac.uk:3389 username@ssh.ee.ucl.ac.uk

Make sure that you replace windowspc with the hostname of the PC you are trying to connect to, and replace username with your usual UCL userid. When prompted, enter your usual UCL password.

On your linux box you will need to install the freerdp package. From this package you can use the xfreerdp application:

xfreerdp -d EE -u USERID localhost:13389