IronRDP

A collection of Rust crates providing an implementation of the Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol, with a focus on security.

Demonstration

Video Codec Support

Supported codecs:

• Uncompressed raw bitmap
• Interleaved Run-Length Encoding (RLE) Bitmap Codec
• RDP 6.0 Bitmap Compression
• Microsoft RemoteFX (RFX)

Examples

ironrdp-viewer

A full-fledged RDP client based on IronRDP crates suite, and implemented using non-blocking, asynchronous I/O. It is built on top of the reusable ironrdp-client library crate.

cargo run --bin ironrdp-viewer -- <HOSTNAME> --username <USERNAME> --password <PASSWORD>

screenshot

Example of utilizing IronRDP in a blocking, synchronous fashion.

This example showcases the use of IronRDP in a blocking manner. It demonstrates how to create a basic RDP client with just a few hundred lines of code by leveraging the IronRDP crates suite.

In this basic client implementation, the client establishes a connection with the destination server, decodes incoming graphics updates, and saves the resulting output as a BMP image file on the disk.

cargo run --example=screenshot -- --host <HOSTNAME> --username <USERNAME> --password <PASSWORD> --output out.bmp

How to enable RemoteFX on server

Run the following PowerShell commands, and reboot.

Set-ItemProperty -Path 'HKLM:\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Terminal Services' -Name 'ColorDepth' -Type DWORD -Value 5
Set-ItemProperty -Path 'HKLM:\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Terminal Services' -Name 'fEnableVirtualizedGraphics' -Type DWORD -Value 1

Alternatively, you may change a few group policies using gpedit.msc:

• Run gpedit.msc.

• Enable Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Remote Desktop Services/Remote Desktop Session Host/Remote Session Environment/RemoteFX for Windows Server 2008 R2/Configure RemoteFX

• Enable Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Remote Desktop Services/Remote Desktop Session Host/Remote Session Environment/Enable RemoteFX encoding for RemoteFX clients designed for Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

• Enable Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Remote Desktop Services/Remote Desktop Session Host/Remote Session Environment/Limit maximum color depth

• Reboot.

Binary releases

Standalone archives are attached to GitHub Releases for the executable packages:

• ironrdp-agent provides the agentic, daemon-backed CLI.
• ironrdp-viewer provides the windowed RDP client CLI.

| Platform | Target triple | | --- | --- | | Windows x64 | x86_64-pc-windows-msvc | | Windows ARM64 | aarch64-pc-windows-msvc | | Linux x64 | x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu | | Linux ARM64 | aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu | | macOS x64 | x86_64-apple-darwin | | macOS ARM64 | aarch64-apple-darwin |

Linux archives use an Ubuntu 22.04 build baseline and require glibc 2.35 or later. macOS archives target macOS 10.13 or later on Intel and macOS 11.0 or later on Apple Silicon.

For example, download and extract the Linux x64 agent from its release:

VERSION=<VERSION>
ASSET="ironrdp-agent-${VERSION}-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz"
curl -fLO "https://github.com/Devolutions/IronRDP/releases/download/ironrdp-agent-v${VERSION}/${ASSET}"
curl -fLO "https://github.com/Devolutions/IronRDP/releases/download/ironrdp-agent-v${VERSION}/${ASSET}.sha256"
sha256sum --check "${ASSET}.sha256"
tar -xzf "${ASSET}"

Replace ironrdp-agent with ironrdp-viewer to download the windowed client from its corresponding package release. Windows archives contain an .exe; all other archives contain the executable without an extension.

Rust version (MSRV)

IronRDP libraries follow a conservative Minimum Supported Rust Version (MSRV) policy. The MSRV is the oldest stable Rust release that is at least 6 months old, bounded by the Rust version available in Debian stable-backports and Fedora stable. The pinned toolchain in rust-toolchain.toml is both the project toolchain and the MSRV validated by CI. See ARCHITECTURE.md for the full policy.

Architecture

See the ARCHITECTURE.md document.

Getting help

• Report bugs in the issue tracker
• Discuss the project on the matrix room