(RDP) Terminals keep changing their terminal name

Hello,
I use a Win10 machine with SQL Express and Samba V5 as a bar computer and two Xiaomi Redmi 5 phones connected to the bar computer via RDP (there are three users logged in simultaneously).

This setup works suprisingly well (will post some details in the future) except for one issue:

All the terminals keep changing their terminal name randomly - Sometimes the bar computer switches to terminal name “RDP1” or “RDP2” which makes it printing tickets on a portable printer, other times some of the phones thinks it’s a computer and switches to “server”.

I don’t know how to troubleshoot this issue, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

stroodl

Do you have an rdp server licence or used rdp patch?

He will be using a patch, or maybe Win 10 Pro, because there is no such thing as RDP server license for Win 10.

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I presumed that. It was a leading question to see if got an honest answer. :wink:

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I haven’t used it before, but the open source patch (someone posted before) just utilised a grey area in the windows license terms, its better than the older patching method. But is still susceptible to windows update breaking it. So that is always a possibility.

What it looks like to me is the terminal name will be stored in a local file, not in the database. So when they connect to RDP, possibly they are not using the same windows account always. If I recall (I have not looked at RDP setup for a long time), you have to setup multiple windows user accounts, one for each “terminal” then when you connect to each, you need to login to its respective terminal windows user account. This is because of the local file needs to be set per windows user.

The Xiaomi Redmi 5 phones are running Android, therefore I would suggest instead of using RDP, go for a more robust setup using either the official SambaPOS Android Mobile Client or QMX. Both will let you take orders from the phones and will be much more stable. There would extra device license costs, however these are one time and the end result is you have something more reliable.

@stroodl I have changed this to a question (from V5 issue) since this is not an issue with SambaPOS. This is an issue with the way you have configured RDP.

I’m using Win10 Pro with RDP Wrapper. Created 3 users and set a terminal name for each of them in Samba.
I don’t think it is an RDP issue - I used a Lenovo win10 tablet which runs samba locally and terminal names kept changing as well.
As for Android mobile client or QMX - sorry but I had a hard time to find any advantage over my setup. It was easy to setup, it’s super fast, I have never had a lag or a database disconnection and I can use the full Samba funcionality including ticket settlement and printing to a mobile printer.

We offer you a native solution. After the Android Client, RDP is not among the ones we recommend.

It is, because there is no reports of this happening under normal SambaPOS usage. I explained already potential reasons which could cause it, but the RDP Wrapper is a workaround for getting an unsupported windows feature to work on windows, and there are already issues reported with it from Windows 10 creators update (and some fixes on the github page).

Actually something that may cause this, which again is not a bug or issue in SambaPOS, is the current terminal is stored in a local file, C:\ProgramData\SambaPOS\SambaPOS5\SambaSettings.txt, which is stored per computer, not per user. AFAIK this has never been any different and since nobody has mentioned this issue before, I can only assume others who use RDP type setups are not utilising terminal name.

There are native solutions now available like I mentioned above and also by Vehbi. These are more suitable now than using RDP - RDP was a solution popular in the past when there was no alternative available. Majority of use cases for using mobile devices is for taking orders which these native solutions support.

This is possible in SambaPOS Android mobile client and QMX

AFAIK this is not supported in the current version of SambaPOS Android mobile client, but does have partial support in the latest version of QMX.

@stroodl actualy I believe I found your issue, it’s mentioned in an old setup guide on the forum for this exact issue. You have to move the SambaSettings.txt file to the user path for each user to use terminal names. Read more here in the original tutorial:

NOTE: The path is different for V5 - SambaPOS5 at the end instead of SambaPOS4.

oh, thank you very much, I must have missed this. Will give it a try tonight.

As for the native solutions - it’s not that I don’t want to pay for a licence, I was actually ready to buy one but later I found out that the app does not offer full Samba functionality yet. I need to be able to settle a ticket which includes calling an external script, changing multiple ticket states etc.
RDP was the very last option to do so but it turned out to be the only one at the moment.

As I said earlier, it works suprisingly well though, you won’t even notice that the app does not run on the phone. It also works with no disconnections for for several weeks in a row without being restarted - you just unlock the phone any time and theres full Samba running immediatelly and reliably.

I don’t think you will ever see the mobile apps offer full SambaPOS functionality because the purpose is for taking orders.

However regarding payments, QMX can do this currently, albeit there are a few things it doesn’t support as its still a new feature implemented in QMX, and it is possible you could link your external script based on Payment Processed event so it will fire regardless where the payment is initiated (of course I don’t know what your script does).

Terminal Name is stored in the SambaSettings.txt (XML) file in:

[Documents]\SambaPOS5\

Actually …
The folder location for SambaSettings.txt is …
%USER PROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\SambaPOS\SambaPOS5

usually that is:
c:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\SambaPOS\SambaPOS5

if the file doesn’t exist under the user profile, SP will use the global one in
C:\ProgramData\SAMBAPOS\SambaPOS5\