5.2. Setting Up a Client Host

ConsoleUser matches visual patterns on the screen. This means it’s expects certain visual settings to be in place otherwise the patterns may not show up. For example, if the resolution is changed the size of the button to matchin, in pixels, will be different so the stored pattern will not find it on the screen.

To help manage this, we provide a set of scripts that use ConsoleUser’s capabilities to apply many of the settings it expects for the system. These scripts are named ConfigureXXX.py where the “XXX” is the type of system to be configured. E.g., ConfigureWin7.py will set up a Windows 7 system for ConsoleUser’s use. There are 3 Configure* files that do not configure a speciifc system, and are there for code organization purposes: ConfigureSystem.py, ConfigureWindows.py, and ConfigureTester.py,

To configure a system you will need to know the host and port of the VNC server for that host. These values are the SystemHost and SystemPort values in the user.conf for a user. For some systems it may also be necessary to pass an administrator username and password. To run this script, the target system should already be logged in as the desired user, then run python3 ConfigureXXX.py -v <SystemHost> -p <SystemPort>. The script will then connect to the system and perform a series of steps to set things like the resolution, desktop theme, visual effects settings and so forth.

5.2.1. Connection Information

The -v and -p flags are required to specify, respectively, the IP/hostname of the VNC server and the VNC port to connect to. Any other options can be passed in with a -c key=value flag, which can be repeated many times to pass many values. While the configuration scrtips assume they cannot match patterns on the screen, so don’t need a regionTarget or similar as the normal operation of ConsoleUser needs, it may need some information about how to interact with the target system.

The most likely value that will need to be specified this way is one that tells ConsoleUser how to type. Some VNC servers exepct a special character to be typed by sending a SHIFT+”base” character (e.g., sending SHIFT + 5 on this type of system will produce a % character). Others expect the client to send the character itself that it wants (e.g., just sending a % in the previous example). And some have a mixture of some situations using a SHIFT and some sending the desired character. These can be selected by setting the keyboardStrategy option. The 3 most likely values are Simple to send SHIFT to modify each character, as one would with a physical keyboard, or SimpleNoShift to always send the desired character without using a SHIFT key to modify anything, or SimpleSomeShift to use the partial solution described above.

If one watches the screen and sees that commands are being typed that result in errors from missing commands or the like, it is most likely the case that the wrong KeyboardStrategy is being used.

5.2.2. Examples

If there is a Windows 10 system that is being hosted 192.168.1.10 on port 5912 we could invoke the proper script as follows:

python3 ConfigureWindows10.py -v 192.168.1.10 -p 5912
python3 ConfigureWindows7.py -v 192.168.1.10 -p 5910 -c keyboardStrategy=SimpleSomeShift