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This is a followup to my original article, "Install xrdp and X11rdp – the comprehensive HOWTO for Ubuntu and Debian based systems". In that article I used the tarball – and hence old – version of x11rdp, because at the time of writing the article, I thought the SVN – hence more up to date – version did not work.

It does in fact work, if you use the more up to date version from the SVN repository, AND you use the newer xrdp server from the Git repository. Thanks to a reader named Daniel for pointing this out.

So now you have a choice, the Old and Busted method from earlier, or the New Hotness I outline below ;)

The info here is also updated so that users of Ubuntu 11.10 (and possibly later, time will tell) can configure RDP to work properly.

The Bonus here is I'll also add in handy tips on how to customize X11rdp so that it'll have the rdp session as default when you connect to it, plus how to customize the logo you see when you connect! Hurrah!

2012-05-23 : Update – Instead of doing all this yourself, why not let my new utility do all the hard work for you?

• Click here to read about it and download it!   :D        

2012-04-07 : Update – How to forward audio from your RDP sessions to your local client :D

2012-03-22 : Update.

Changelog;

• A recent update to the xrdp code in the git repository prevented the tutorial working – added extra step to xrdp compilation stage (Thanks go to read Daniel!) 

2011-12-02 : Article updated.

Changelog:

• 1) Explicitly explain about where to perform the various commands as a normal user or as sudo/root. (Thanks go to reader Andriy!)
• 2) Greatly simplified the method by turning startwm.sh into a symbolic link to call the /etc/X11/Xsession script. (Thanks go to reader Ed!)

2011-11-18 : See Update 1 near the bottom of the article for automatically removing&restoring the background picture for the RDP session.

 

I'm assuming you're running Ubuntu 11.10, which I wrote about in another article on how to customize that to give you a sensible desktop rather than that abomination they call Unity.

In fact you'd be well advised to read that through right now if you haven't already, as I'm going to use what I did there, so that when you log into a machine running Ubuntu 11.10, you'll be presented with a sensible desktop. In fact this article is being written and tested on the fresh 11.10 virtual machine I used in that last article.

1)  Obtain X11rdp from SVN repository…

 

If you haven't got it already, install subversion – you need it to obtain the SVN version of X11rdp;

sudo apt-get install subversion

Then in a terminal, in your home directory, and as your normal (non-root) user, type;

svn co svn://server1.xrdp.org/srv/svn/repos/main/x11rdp_xorg71

svn will then nab the source from the repository to your home directory.

 

 

2) Compile X11rdp…

This is much the same procedure as outlined in the old article.

 

 

 

You'll need various development libraries needed to build Xorg;

sudo apt-get build-dep xserver-xorg-core

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you haven't done so already, install automake 1.7 and 1.9 – the x11rdp compilation looks for those and whines if it can't find 'em;

sudo apt-get install automake1.7 automake1.9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Make a directory, to which the X11rdp (and in fact Xorg) build system will place all the built binaries and files. I'll use;

sudo mkdir /opt/X11rdp

NOTE: /opt/X11rdp will be owned by root. This is the intended result.

Next, go into the root directory of the downloaded X11rdp source tree, which will be in your home directory;

cd x11rdp_xorg71

Then start the compilation using the already configured build script, supplying it with the directory location you made above;

time sudo sh buildx.sh /opt/X11rdp

 

 

Yes that's right, I added the "time" command in there, which will tell you how long it took to compile.  ;)

Now, be prepared! The compilation takes AGES! You're basically compiling a whole Xorg tree here – that is – the whole X Window Display System. I'm not joking – this will take a loooooong time, so, go away while it's doing this (or read on for a bit to see what you'll need to do next).

 

 

 

 

OK, so it took my virtual machine with 4 CPU's running over an iSCSI system disk 18 minutes and 25 seconds to compile. Your machine may be quicker, may be slower – ain't my fault if it takes longer :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After compilation is complete you can (even as a normal user);

cd /opt/X11rdp/bin

ls -lh

To see if everything is there. In my case it is so we continue…

Lastly, we need to soft link the X11rdp binary to /usr/bin;

sudo ln -s /opt/X11rdp/bin/X11rdp /usr/bin/X11rdp

 

 

 

 

3) Compile xrdp from the Git repository

 

 

In the previous article I used the xrdp package from the Ubuntu/Debian package repository. This was purely out of convenience and the fact that I had always used it before.

However, both xrdp and X11rdp have been updated a lot and new features added, such that at time of writing, the current version of xrdp supplied by the distribution packages does not work with the SVN version of the X11rdp server. You'll get an xrdp session filled with garbage, as the screenshot shows. That totally threw me off when I wrote my original article, and I wasted about 2 days trying various different distros, 32 and 64-bit, and was even considering voodoo magic to get it to work ;) … no chickens were harmed though :P

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So we need to nab the xrdp source from the FreeRDP Git repository. To do that we'll need to install git (if you don't already have it);

sudo apt-get install git libssl-dev libpam0g-dev

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next up, we'll need to nab  the startup script from the old & busted xrdp package, for use with our new hotness compiled xrdp source, so;

sudo apt-get install xrdp

This installs the Ubuntu xrdp package, and also VNC server/clients.

Then

sudo apt-get remove xrdp

This will get rid of Mr Old and Busted, while keeping the newly generated xrdp user,group, and startup scripts, because I didn't "–purge" them whilst removing – which is one of the useful benefits of using a Debian based system. This will come in very handy later thank you very much ;)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next up, retrieve xrdp source from the git repository;

NOTE: Again, do this as a normal user, in your home directory!

git clone https://github.com/FreeRDP/xrdp.git xrdp.git

If you have trouble with https , then try

git clone http://github.com/FreeRDP/xrdp.git

 

 

 

 

 

Next, do the following steps, which will

• compile xrdp
• install it in the correct locations for Ubuntu usage
• copy and change the ownership and permissions of the RSA keys required for an encrypted RDP connection;

 

NOTE: Again, this starts off using your normal user account in your home directory…

2012-03-22 NOTE : Added extra step (in orange) so xrdp works correctly again.

A) Compile xrdp

cd xrdp.git
git checkout 4cd0c118c273730043cc77b749537dedc7051571
./bootstrap
./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
make

B) Install xrdp in the correct locations for Ubuntu/Debian use;

sudo make install

C) Copy and change permissions of the generated RSA keys required for an encrypted RDP session.

NOTE: at this point, you will find yourself in a root prompt (after sudo su -)…

sudo su -
mkdir /usr/share/doc/xrdp
mv /etc/xrdp/rsakeys.ini /usr/share/doc/xrdp/
chmod 600 /usr/share/doc/xrdp/rsakeys.ini
chown xrdp:xrdp /usr/share/doc/xrdp/rsakeys.ini 

 

Stay in the root prompt for the next step.

UPDATE: 2011-12-02; After a bit of conversation in the comments below, a better way of using the startwm.sh script has been figured out.

In the comments section below, you'll notice I had a nice conversation with reader Ed, and eventually we came up with a better use for the startwm.sh script.

Here's what to do. You should still be in a root prompt after the "RSA keys" step above…

A) Make a backup of startwm.sh

cd /etc/xrdp

mv startwm.sh startwm.sh.BACKUP

B) Make a symbolic link called startwm.sh , to the file /etc/X11/Xsession

ln -s /etc/X11/Xsession /etc/xrdp/startwm.sh

 

 

Here's a screenshot showing startwm.sh as now being a symbolic link to the Xsession script.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, edit /etc/init.d/xrdp and add or change the following near the beginning of that init script;

PIDDIR=/var/run 

SESMAN_START=yes

 

 

 

 

 

And a screenshot of the lines highlighted.

Note: I copied the old Ubuntu "PIDDIR=/var/run/xrdp" line and kept it as a comment above.

OK, lets try starting xrdp… /etc/init.d/xrdp start

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ps ax | grep rdp and… Success! Seems to be up and running.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Okay from another computer try running your RDP client and see if you can connect and log in to an RDP session…

rdesktop -a 16 -g 1240×800 192.168.1.231   (your client and ip address will almost certainly differ from mine)

 

 

 

And yes indeed, at least the freshly compiled xrdp is up and running.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOTE: If you don't want to have to be manually hunting down and killing an X11rdp process, and also having to stop and restart xrdp, don't try logging in like I'm just about to do as a test. We need to proceed to section 4 which is next up, in order to get our sessions running properly…

 

 

 

 

 

Almost there!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At least now there isn't a screen full of garbage, so the xrdp/X11rdp combination works. How to get a proper desktop though? Oh yes, we need to tell xrdp what type of session we want…

 

 

4) Telling xrdp what kind of session we want, after logging in…

UPDATE: I have re-written this section, because of the new method we did above, which has made this procedure FAR simpler!

There is a script in /etc/xrdp called startwm.sh , which is responsible for starting the window manager after you have logged in. In the step above we renamed it and turned it into a symbolic link to /etc/X11/Xsession.

In its original form, the beginning of the script as supplied read like this;

# change the order in line below to run to run whatever window manager you
# want, default to kde

SESSIONS="gnome-session blackbox fluxbox startxfce4 startkde xterm"

start the window manager
wm_start()
{
  for WindowManager in $SESSIONS
  do
    which $WindowManager
    if test $? -eq 0
    then
      echo "Starting $WindowManager"
      $WindowManager
      return 0
    fi
  done
  return 0
}

 

This would have caused us trouble when logging into xrdp, because what it's saying is "Here's a default bunch of the usual window managers. Go through each one and if you find one, start it".

Blech!

Not very flexible, and way over-complicated. Personally speaking, I'd rather it look at a file in my login directory and start whatever window manager or session I want.

Also, we can do really interesting things with a customizable .xsession script – read Update 1 at the bottom of this article for bonus hot-ness ;)

By turning startwm.sh into a symbolic link above, we can now automatically use our .xsession script in our home directory.

A) Edit or create the file .xsession in your login directory.

Please read Update 1 at the bottom of this article for additional hotness – automatically remove background for the RDP session and restore when you log out of the RDP session.

In your home directory there should be a file called .xsession

Don't worry if there isn't – it just means you haven't created it yet. Anyway, after logging in via the xrdp login screen, the .xsession file basically specifies what kind of desktop session we want.

In this case, I'm going to use the Gnome 3 classic session, which if you followed my other article, should be configured by now to resemble a pretty usable old skool gnome desktop.

Simply open up a terminal and as your normal user either edit or create a file called .xsession , and enter the following;

gnome-session --session=gnome-fallback

Save the file, and if the xrdp server is not already running, start it up.

 

Now try to connect to an RDP session!

5) Connect via RDP!

I'll try using the RDP client from Windows 7, mstsc.exe;

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the way, remember to select "sesman-X11rdp" module at the xrdp login screen! Log in and…

 

 

 

 

Bingo! Works nicely!

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I stated above, you can now specify exactly what session you wish to see when you log in via xrdp.

I installed Xfce, logged out of that RDP session, edited my .xsession file, commented out the gnome session and entered this instead;

#gnome-session --session=gnome-fallback
xfce4-session

Then logged back in;

 

 

 

Freedom of choice is wonderful, isn't it ;)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note that now you're using the more recently updated versions of xrdp and X11rdp, you can specify more color depths; 8,15,16,24,32 all work! (Although, I doubt using full 32-bit color over the internet is going to be fast – haven't tried it yet).

And now for the last section of this tutorial; customization…

5) Customizing the xrdp login screen…

 

A) X11rdp as default on the login screen…

First of all, let's make the sesman-X11rdp option appear by default. This is useful because A) You don't have to keep manually selecting it every time, and B) you can just plug in your login and password details to your RDP client and you can log straight into your RDP session.

So with that in mind, have a look at the file /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini ;

[globals]
bitmap_cache=yes
bitmap_compression=yes
port=3389
crypt_level=low
channel_code=1
max_bpp=24
#black=000000
#grey=d6d3ce
#dark_grey=808080
#blue=08246b
#dark_blue=08246b
#white=ffffff
#red=ff0000
#green=00ff00
#background=626c72

[xrdp1]
name=sesman-Xvnc
lib=libvnc.so
username=ask
password=ask
ip=127.0.0.1
port=-1

[xrdp2]
name=console
lib=libvnc.so
ip=127.0.0.1
port=5900
username=na
password=ask

[xrdp3]
name=vnc-any
lib=libvnc.so
ip=ask
port=ask5900
username=na
password=ask

[xrdp4]
name=sesman-any
lib=libvnc.so
ip=ask
port=-1
username=ask
password=ask

[xrdp5]
name=rdp-any
lib=librdp.so
ip=ask
port=ask3389

[xrdp6]
name=freerdp-any
lib=libxrdpfreerdp.so
ip=ask
port=ask3389

[xrdp7]
name=sesman-X11rdp
lib=libxup.so
username=ask
password=ask
ip=127.0.0.1
port=-1
xserverbpp=24

Notice the section "[xrdp7]" .

It's the one used for use with X11rdp.

Simply edit that file (you need to be root), cut & paste that to the top of the list and rename it to [xrdp1] , renumbering the others too. You should end up with something like this;

[globals]
bitmap_cache=yes
bitmap_compression=yes
port=3389
crypt_level=low
channel_code=1
max_bpp=24
#black=000000
#grey=d6d3ce
#dark_grey=808080
#blue=08246b
#dark_blue=08246b
#white=ffffff
#red=ff0000
#green=00ff00
#background=626c72

[xrdp1]
name=sesman-X11rdp
lib=libxup.so
username=ask
password=ask
ip=127.0.0.1
port=-1
xserverbpp=24

[xrdp2]
name=sesman-Xvnc
lib=libvnc.so
username=ask
password=ask
ip=127.0.0.1
port=-1

[xrdp3]
name=console
lib=libvnc.so
ip=127.0.0.1
port=5900
username=na
password=ask

[xrdp4]
name=vnc-any
lib=libvnc.so
ip=ask
port=ask5900
username=na
password=ask

[xrdp5]
name=sesman-any
lib=libvnc.so
ip=ask
port=-1
username=ask
password=ask

[xrdp6]
name=rdp-any
lib=librdp.so
ip=ask
port=ask3389

[xrdp7]
name=freerdp-any
lib=libxrdpfreerdp.so
ip=ask
port=ask3389

Save the edited file, then restart xrdp with sudo /etc/init.d/xrdp restart . Then use your RDP client to connect again;

 

 

 

There ya go! X11rdp is now the default session type.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Press Cancel, and now enter your complete login/password details to your RDP client. You'll be logged straight into your RDP session using the X11rdp server :)

B) Changing the Xrdp Logo on the login screen!

 

I'm including this as a bit of fun, but I can see where this might be useful in a corporate environment where you may wish to place your company logo on the login screen.

It's actually remarkably simple…

Having looked at the xrdp source, I noticed that the utility loads the logo bitmaps at time of execution, so as an experiment, I spent a little bit of time to come up with a newer, fresher Xrdp logo, here's what it looks like on the xrdp login screen – compare that to the old logo in the last screenshot above;

 

 

 

I think I like mine better, but I'm biased  ;)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Basically all you need to do is replace the logo bitmaps with something of your choice – they have to be saved in BMP format, and it shouldn't matter if the bitmap is larger or smaller in size compared to the original files (widthxheight in pixels) , because if I've read the xrdp source code correctly, it takes the dimensions of the source bitmap and allocates the memory properly for proper fixing into the resultant login screen, from the bottom right outwards. You'll notice my logo is a bit bigger than the original Xrdp logo.

 

 

 

The bitmaps, after installation, are stored in the directory /usr/share/xrdp/

 

 

 

 

The two main ones to consider are xrdp24b.bmp, and xrdp256.bmp – obviously for 24-bit and 8-bit versions respectively.

 

 

 

 

Here's the 24-bit one I made in GIMP as an example. If you like it, feel free to use this if you wish, but tell people where you got it from if they ask (and consider making a donation for all this fine work I've been doing for your benefit :D ).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here's the 8-bit version. Again same condition of use as above :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Okay and that's it for this one – I think I've covered just about all the specifics which are relevant to Ubuntu 11.10, and once again I hoped this helped!

Have fun!

So, how did this procedure work out for you? Let me know in the comments section! :D
(Oh and please rate and share this on your social links!) 

 

UPDATE 1 : 2011-11-18 :  Automatically remove your desktop background for the RDP session

This is relevant to the Gnome session only…

Edit your .xsession file to look like the following;

background=`gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri`
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri ''
gnome-session --session=gnome-fallback
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri $background

Basically this saves your current background setting , then clears it, runs your gnome session, and after you log out of that session, restores the original background setting.

Simple ;)

 

X11rdp, Ubuntu 11.10, Gnome 3, xrdp customization - New Hotness! Updated!, 9.9 out of 10 based on 49 ratings

Want it all done automatically for you? Click here ;) This is a followup to my original article, "Install xrdp and X11rdp – the comprehensive HOWTO for Ubuntu and Debian...