Keystone README

What is Keystone?
Servers
Status
Bugs
Download
FAQs
Todo
Credits
References

What is Keystone?

Keystone is a tool for KDE that + allows you to remotely access the desktops of machines using the cross-platform + VNC system. Keystone can access machines running a variety of operating + systems (including most UNIX systems and Windows 95/98/NT/2000) providing + they are running a VNC server. Note that Keystone is only a client + program, you will need to download a server separately in order to + use it.

The protocol used by Keystone (called RFB) was developed, and released + as GPL by ORL (now the UK branch of AT&T research), they also + wrote and maintain GPL servers for several platforms. You can find + both information about the protocol and links to servers for a range + of platforms on their website.

Keystone started life as a port of Markus Wuebben's kvncviewer program + to KDE 2, but in the course porting the code, I have rewritten and + redesigned most of the system. The new implementation builds on several + new facilities that were not available in KDE 1, such as KPixmapIO + and QSocket. There is so little of the original code left that I have + decided on a name change, and to put the version number back to 0.1.

You can see a few screenshots of Keystone + in action on my screenshots page. The screenshots may or may not + reflect the look of the current version as I have some look and feel + improvements planned.

Servers

Most Linux distributions include the standard Xvnc server (usually + run via the vncserver script), you can also download this and + servers for other platforms such as MS Windows from the VNC + website. If you have a problem with setting up a server then you + should read the VNC + FAQ, and if that does not help join the VNC mailing list. Do not + mail me on this topic - I can't help and won't even reply.

I may in future write a server that operates in the same manner as + the Win32 server for KDE. The Win32 server differs from the X11 server + in that it does not virtualise the entire desktop. This has both advantages + and disadvatages, it means that you can make an existing session available + over the network, but only allows you to run a single server. I may + also put a GUI together that makes it easy to configure the ORL server.

Status

The current version is 0.4, and the following + are now working:

0.1 +
- Non-blocking socket handling
- Authentication and logon
- KDE 2 user interface
- Raw and CopyRect encodings
- Full screen mode
- Grab keyboard mode
- Graphics
- Taking screenshots of the remote desktop
- Event dispatching
- Konqueror helper application support (you can run Keystone + by entering a vnc: URL anywhere in KDE).
- Options, login, password and about dialogs
+
0.2 +
- XSHM support using KPixmapIO
- Now uses KXMLGUI (thanks to Kurt)
- Tru64 patch from Tom Leitner
- Status reporting improvements
- Config handling fixed
- Recent connections list implemented
- Update frequency respected
+
0.3 [KDE 2.0] +
- Portability fixes for FreeBSD (and maybe others)
+
0.4 +
- Icons for the full screen mode now reflect the current state
- Added a toolbar (optional of course)
- Added support for the clipboard (you can cut and paste between the + local and remote machines)
- Added some what's this help to the options dialog
+

Bugs

Version 0.4 contains the following known bugs: +

Custom about dialog is not shown
+ I can't see a clean way to fix this without creating a complete custom + help menu. For now I've left the standard about dialog in place. +
Crash when you connect to a non-existant server
+ I can reproduce this every time, but I can't figure out what's wrong + other developers have reported similar problems and they seem to be + down to QSocket. The only known fix so far is to use KSocket instead. + I'd prefer to fix the problem at the source, but I'm having no luck and + I suspect QSocket may also be causing some other weird network issues + I've seen, so if I can't track down the bug soon I'll give in and switch + to KSocket like everyone else. +

Download

Keystone is available in the kdenetwork module of the + KDE CVS, and + is included in the KDE 2.0 release. The current version is 0.4. + Note that Keystone requires KDE 2, you cannot use KDE 1.x.

FAQs

Why don't the shortcut keys work in full screen mode?
+ When you're in full screen mode Keystone grabs the keyboard to send + every key press to the remote screen. This means that you can send key + combinations that are used by Keystone or KDE to the remote screen. If + you really hate it, then you can add -nograb to the command line + arguments to disable all keyboard grabs. I will add an option to allow + this behaviour to be overridden in a future release. +
Why is Keystone so slow?
+ Currently only the simplest of the RFB encodings are supported, this + means that Keystone is only useful on fairly fast networks. This is + a serious bug and is being addressed. +

Todo

+ These are the things I'm hoping to add to future versions of Keystone. + They're vaguely sorted in order of importance. +

RRE encoding.
+ I've started this, but the implementation has some + bugs so it did not make the cut for Keystone 0.3.
CoRRE and Hextile encodings
Session management
Support for Windows Terminal Server.
+ There is now a GPL implementation + of the protocol, and the author is happy for me to use the code. If someone + can offer me an account to test it on then this is possible.
Zoom support.
+ This will be handled using the same protocol extension + as is used in the Palm client, this will allow you to make use of + server side scaling to reduce the amount of network traffic. You + will also be able to do client side zooms, but in this case the + full screen needs to transmitted over the network.
Macros
Monitor mode (thumbnails of several machines)
ZLib extension support
Bookmarks
URL specific settings
Possibly a DnD extension using a mechanism based on mulitpart + MIME attachments.

Credits

Keystone owes a lot to Markus Wuebben's kvncviewer which some of + the code is derived from. Thanks are also due to Espen Sand the author + of khexedit from which I borrowed some code for the about dialog. + Alison Burch drew the bridge image used in the background of this + page (and in future versions of Keystone too of course). Finally thanks + go to ORL for making the RFB protocol and servers GPL.

References
+

The Keystone homepage
+ http://www.ipso-facto.demon.co.uk/keystone/
The VNC Homepage
+ http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/
The VNC FAQ
+ http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/faq.html
The KDE Homepage
+ http://www.kde.org/