Application using Remote Desktop

[Bob Whitaker]

We have a desktop application which has an "activity" table which keeps track of who is logged in to the system.
Each time a user logs in a record is written to this table with the user name, machine name, date and time.
Some of our users are now deploying the app using a cloud server and and RDP connection to it, which with a good internet connection works very well indeed.
The problem is though when the login record is written the machine name is not the name of the machine the user is sitting in front of but the cloud server.
This is completely understandable as the application is being run on that server and the users pc is essentially a dumb terminal.

So here's my question - does anyone know of a way of retrieving the user's machine name in these circumstances.

As always my thanks in advance of any replies.

Bob

[Stan Mathews]

Re: Application using Remote Desktop

I believe you're going to have to add a routine that, if the machine name is the server, requests the user to provide some information, and write that to the activity table instead of the user machine name.

[Finian Lennon]

Re: Application using Remote Desktop

Bob: I used to do this using the old DOS SET command in a batch file in the autoexec of the app. However, as OS's have changed, so have the methods for recovering this information. Try this: when logged in to the app via RD, got to a command prompt and run the SET dos command and look at the results. If it shows "COMPUTERNAME" in the list that's what you need. You then need a batch file to redirect the set command results to a text file which you parse to identify the computer name. Not elegant but for example, it works for a Virtual Server running Server 2012 R2 I log into. If you don't have permissions to run a command prompt you'll need a different approach.