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X11rdp, Ubuntu 11.10, Gnome 3, xrdp customization – New Hotness! Updated!

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276 comments to X11rdp, Ubuntu 11.10, Gnome 3, xrdp customization – New Hotness! Updated!

  • Haris

    Hi Kevin;

    Thank you for this manual.
    What I can tell you, it is working also on 12.04TLS Beta1.
    Also, I found on http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=251769 solution for my little problem: starting RDP session, will start Gnome session in English, not in any other language.
    So, I put next few lines from the link above into startwm.sh:

    if [ -r /etc/default/locale ]; then
    . /etc/default/locale
    export LANG LANGUAGE
    fi

    Regards, Haris

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  • Penn

    It worked great the first time around on 11.10 but now with the BETA 12.04 Ubuntu I am getting x11rdp Error 1
    error make x11rdp
    It cant find a whole bunch of directories probably because I am missing all that stuff :-/

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  • Ngaiso

    Hi Guys

    Thanks for the comprehensive tutorial. Mine is working like a charm from a Mac Book, the only problem that i have is that when I try to connect to the X11rdp using the RDP Client for MAC, it crashes. I think its because that client does not support High color 16bit. As alternative I can connect to the server via CoRD or from the Windows Client in VMware

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  • LeifK

    when trying to connect using mint11 as the server I get this message.
    [20120315-19:12:57] [ERROR] X server — no display in range is available
    This is in the /var/log/xrdp-sesman.log

    Any ideas

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  • Protvis

    Hi Kevin, thanks very much for the tutorial, it helped me a lot all ready.
    I still have one issue that I can’t figure out yet. First let me tell you what I’m trying to do:
    I configured an ubuntu 11.10 virtual machine on kvm on a server, to login into the ubuntu, you can use the local user account or you can use users which authenticate to an active directory running on a windows 2008 server (please don’t ask me why I want to do this ;) ).
    Now this is working fine, the next step is using a remote desktop from a windows computer to login to the ubuntu vm.

    Your tutorial works fine for the local user, but can’t login with the active directory users. I’m fairly new to computers, and only just started working in linux, so I was hoping it was kind of a stupid thing I forgot (or don’t know about), any idea’s or hints on this one? (I know it’s not that much related with your manual, but no hurt in asking, right ? :) ).

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  • Kyle

    Hi – where is the donate button? and can I ‘copy’ the x11rdp binary’ to another PC or should I pick up the entire /opt/X11rdp directory and move that as well and then do the linking?

    Otherwise very useful –

    and I like Unity – sorry for that…

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    • Hi Kyle

      The Donate button is located at the top right of the page.

      As for the x11rdp binary, yes, it is possible to copy it over to the same location as the original – as long as the target system is the same architecture as the system it was compiled on (e.g. Intel/AMD cpu).

      You might have to do a few test runs after that to see where things are breaking – as the x11rdp binary – which is really an X server itself – will be expecting fonts to be in the same place as the system it was compiled on, for example, so you’ll have to experiment with symbolic links to the existing fonts directory on your target system.

      No harm in experimenting and learning from the experience – oh and do let me know how you get on :)

      Fair enough that you like Unity – no need to apologise ;)

      Regards!

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      • Kyle

        Hi Kevin – thanks for the response. I just moved the whole /opt/X11rdp folder – its was interesting as the target was a 10.04.4 Server and I had to recompile both the xrdp and X11rdp from source as per your notes. The 11.10 and 12.04 desktops we fine with the version of xrdp from the repos.

        It is very fast – however I have come across a quirk that may be of interest. On the 10.04 Servers I have KVM hosting a Windows 2008 server and another Ubuntu 10.04 Server instance. The interesting thing is that the xrdp display has what I can only describe as “desktop bleed” from the Windows Server desktop – even though its not logged in and not even visible on the desktop. (I have installed Gnome Desktop on my two Ubuntu Servers).

        The resulting display is quite messy with bits and pieces from the various OS’s hosted on the actual server.

        I can email you some images if you wish, let mw know…

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        • Kyle, hi

          Hrm interesting… can you email me at “kevin@”+the domain name of this site?

          I’ll see if I can replicate that.

          Regards!

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          • Kyle

            Hi Kevin – any luck with testing Windows KVM clients ?

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            • Hi Kyle – not at the moment. I’ve been extremely busy and haven’t been able to even so much as make a new blog entry in the last few weeks due to other priorities.

              It’s not easy being a husband and father AND a nerd at the same time ;) I’m in the middle of doing a project for my wife as well.

              I’ll try to get on that this evening though.

              Did you email me with examples of what you’re seeing, btw?

              Regards

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              • Kyle

                Hi Kevin – no worries – yes I did send some screen shots – I can resend if you need me to…

                Just to summaries:

                Host was Ubuntu Server 10.04.4 with KVM – running a Windows 2008 Enterprise Server.

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  • Herman

    Hi,

    I followed your tutorial but it isn’t working.

    When I try to connect I get a messagebox,

    connecting to sesman ip 127.0.0.1 port 3350
    sesman connect ok
    sending login info to session manager, please wait…
    xrdp_mm_process_login_response: login successful for displa
    started connecting
    connecting…
    connect error
    connecting…
    connect error
    connecting…
    connect error
    connecting…
    connect error
    connection problem, giving up
    some problem

    with an OK button that restarts this dialog.

    Any suggestions?

    Tx,

    Herman

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    • Herman, hi

      Seems there was a commit to the xrdp git repository which introduces this behaviour.

      Thanks to reader Daniel for the solution – I updated the article at the xrdp compile step with his information.

      Please let me know how that works.. currently verifying your problem and the solution so I’ll update when complete.

      Regards

      Kevin.

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    • Herman, hi!

      Yes I could replicate this error.

      Reader Daniel spotted that one too and I have incorporated his findings into the article – caused by a recent change to xrdp in the git source repository.

      It’s just an extra step after git clone.

      You can probably get away with doing the following in the xrdp.git directory to sort this out;

      1) sudo make uninstall
      2) make distclean
      3) git checkout 4cd0c118c273730043cc77b749537dedc7051571

      Then proceed with the rest of the xrdp compilation/installation as before. Today I altered the article to add that extra checkout step, so have a look at that part to see how it fits in with the tutorial.

      Hope this works out for you! Please let me know how you got on.

      Regards!

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  • Daniel

    I’ve tried the xrdp version from git (16 Mar 2012 commit b1246126750f0a8e8c502611f82d503555d0bf94)
    git clone https://github.com/FreeRDP/xrdp.git xrdp.git
    but it doesn’t work well with x11rdp (but it does complie)

    I figured out that the commit from 18 Nov 2011 works well with x11rdp (so you can apply this article howto to it). Just clone the repo as above and then:
    cd xrdp.git
    git checkout 4cd0c118c273730043cc77b749537dedc7051571
    (compile as discribed in the article)

    Cheers

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    • Daniel you’re a star!

      Will update the article ASAP. Can’t have the thing not working for folks (as you can see, a couple have already gotten bitten by this!)

      Regards!

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  • Jim Hutson

    thanks for your excellent guide, but I still can’t connect via rdp. When I connect from the client, i get “login successful for display…” followed by “started connecting”, “connecting…\n connect error\n” four times before it says “giving up”. In my xrdp-sesman.log i have:

    [20120321-15:21:29] [INFO ] scp thread on sck 7 started successfully
    [20120321-15:21:30] [INFO ] ++ created session (access granted): username jhutson, ip 172.18.11.5:51193 – socket: 7
    [20120321-15:21:30] [INFO ] starting X11rdp session…
    [20120321-15:21:39] [ERROR] X server for display 10 startup timeout
    [20120321-15:21:39] [INFO ] starting xrdp-sessvc – xpid=2869 – wmpid=2868
    [20120321-15:21:40] [ERROR] X server for display 10 startup timeout
    [20120321-15:21:40] [ERROR] another Xserver is already active on display 10
    [20120321-15:21:40] [DEBUG] aborting connection…
    [20120321-15:21:40] [INFO ] ++ terminated session: username jhutson, display :10.0, session_pid 2866, ip 172.18.11.5:51193 – socket: 7

    I can also run sudo X11rdp :10 from the server (but do see error opening SecurityPolicy and a few font path errors). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    thanks,
    ji

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  • Matthias J.

    I have another problem while connecting .. connection window suddenly shuts down.

    wheater i use rdesktop in ubuntu or win 7 rdp, log just says
    connection succesful and afterwards it’s terminated

    maybe i did something wrong at one step? .. i will try it again later

    ps: i’m new to ubuntu :)

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    • Yeah, sometimes I get that behaviour too – during the initial connection phase after logging in, the window suddenly closes.

      Usually though if you immediately reconnect with the same login/resolution details, you get reconnected to the session again which was started when you initially logged in.

      I don’t know why this happens – perhaps there’s some kind of race condition between the RDP clients and the session manager.

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      • Matthias J.

        Hey Kevin,
        There is still the same problem.
        BUT… if i connect with original admin account (first account i created in ubuntu) then everything works fine. If i connect with my account which i added later and gave admininstrator rights it doesn't work. Maybe there are some problems concerning the rights of the manually added user?
        So the problem is still:  Connecting ,,,, Connection ok -> Window shuts down.
        I also tried setting some rights in file system you mentioned in another comment:
        http://scarygliders.net/2011/11/17/x11rdp-ubuntu-11-10-gnome-3-xrdp-customization-new-hotness/comment-page-1/#comment-1086
        If i do so the windows doesn't shut down, but it stays grey.. i don't see anything.
         
        Do you have any ideas?

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        • Matthias, hi again…
          I'm in the middle of writing a new article – which is turning into a bit of an epic. After I've finished and published it (well, Part 1 of a series on the subject), I'll try and replicate the behaviour you're experiencing.
          It sounds like I'd need to create a new user on a system with xrdp on it and try to login as that user.
          I'll let you know how I got on, so please bear with me for now.
          Regards!

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          • Matthias J.

            Thank for your help! You do a great job :) I'll wait for it.
            Regards
             
            PS: what i exactly did is:
            1. new ubuntu system
            2. First login with new admin account
            3. created new user and gave him admininstrator permissions
            4. and finally i did all the steps you mentioned in your article ..
            -> and now i'm in this situation which i explained above

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            • Matthias

              Which version of Ubuntu?

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              • Matthias J.

                it's 11.10

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                • Okay, setting up 11.10 Desktop in a VM to see if I can replicate.

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                  • Matthias J.

                    maybe some more information.. after logging in the first time i made a full update of the system .. then new account .. and proceeded the steps above from the new account with administrator rights ..  i try to describe as exactly as i can.
                    regards

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                    • Let's see if I've gotten this right then;

                      You have:

                      • Fresh ubuntu 11.10 installation.
                      • Installed updates
                      • Added a new user

                      Then I'm not so clear… did you

                      A) Add a new user who has Administrator rights, then followed the X11rdp article

                      OR

                      B) Add a new user, then followed the X11rdp article as superuser?

                       

                      Regards

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                  • Matthias J.

                    a) first a new User, gave administrator rights and then followed this article with the new user

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                    • Okay I'll do it that way.

                      I've already set up a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.10 (with all current updates, and installed gnome-shell).

                      I shall add a new user with admin rights and go through the steps in the article. Though to be honest, I don't see how that can make any difference to the end result :)

                      I'll post a reply again when complete.

                      Regards

                      EDIT: Okay, I set up a new user "joeblow" as an administrator, via the gnome Users application, then performed each step in the article. xrdp/x11rdp works flawlessly, so, to be honest I think you've made some kind of error when following the article. I suggest starting from a clean slate and trying the procedure again – it's working for lots of readers and hasn't failed on me yet.

                      Regards, Kevin.

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                    • Matthias J.

                      Hmm, strange :)
                       
                      So X11RDP works with both accounts, the first account (which is administrator by default?) and also X11RDP for the new account? ..
                      Hmm, okay, I'll try it again somewhen next days. I'll let you know the result.
                       
                      Thanks for your help sp far!
                      Regards

                      PS: Let me know some useful information (if exist) where i can find some more logs (and so on) for trouble shooting :)

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  • Ngaiso

    Hi Kevin

    Im not sure if you have answered my question in you previous posts. The issue that I have at the the moment is that when I login remotely, I dont see sessions that were running remotely.Is it possible that suppose I was working on the session below locally on the machine below and when I go away and then rdp to the server, i can connect and see that session and continue working as if Im seated on that machine

    Eg

    sesman.
    root@test-lab:/etc/xrdp# ps -e | grep rdp
    9604 ? 00:00:00 xrdp-sessvc
    9633 ? 00:00:00 xrdp-chansrv
    9821 pts/0 00:00:00 xrdp
    9823 pts/0 00:00:00 xrdp-sesman
    root@test-lab:/etc/xrdp#

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    • Ngaiso, hi

      When I RDP in to my machine, this is what I see with ps;

      kcave@phenominal-debian:~$ ps ax | grep rdp
      2549 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/sbin/xrdp
      2552 ? S 0:00 /usr/sbin/xrdp-sesman
      12124 ? S 0:00 /usr/sbin/xrdp-sessvc 12126 12125
      12126 ? S 0:03 X11rdp :10 -geometry 1024×600 -depth 24 -bs -ac -nolisten tcp
      12145 ? Sl 0:00 xrdp-chansrv
      12433 pts/0 S+ 0:00 grep rdp
      kcave@phenominal-debian:~$

      I don’t see X11rdp running on your ps output – how are you disconnecting from the RDP session locally?

      EDIT:

      I initiated a local session on my linux box, then disconnected, then tried reconnecting to that session from my netbook next door over the wireless connection – it works for me. Here’s a screenshot of the re-opened session from the netbook…

      Reconnect remote rdp session via netbook

      Regards!

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  • John Oeler

    Worked perfectly on Ubuntu 11.1 on my local subnet.

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  • Anders Selander

    Worked like a charm on a 12.04, once I had read through the comments and found Daniel’s working git checkout of xrdp.

    However, how is the rdp protocol securitywise? I mean, I’ve restricted sshd to only allow key-based logins so it feels a bit strange to all of a sudden do password logins over rdp.

    Would it make any sense to make xrdp only listen to port 3389 locally and set-up a tunnel (ssh, stunnel, etc) to it from where-ever one wants to run rdesktop? (This will, of course, come with a performance penalty.)

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    • Anders, hi!

       

      However, how is the rdp protocol securitywise? I mean, I’ve restricted sshd to only allow key-based logins so it feels a bit strange to all of a sudden do password logins over rdp.
       
      Would it make any sense to make xrdp only listen to port 3389 locally and set-up a tunnel (ssh, stunnel, etc) to it from where-ever one wants to run rdesktop? (This will, of course, come with a performance penalty.)
       
      No you're absolutely correct! I personally ALWAYS protect the RDP ports behind a firewall, and tunnel to them via ssh. In fact I am writing an awesome SSH article right now which will include how to protect RDP and every other protocol using ssh tunnelling :)
       
      I didn't mention anything about protecting the RDP ports at the time because it was in my opinion outwith the scope of the article, which is all about how to set up x11rdp/xrdp :)
       
      There can be improvements in performance if you use a different cipher… more to come soon, after I finish the ssh article :)
       
      Regards!
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  • Anders Selander

    As a proof of concept, I added “adress=127.0.0.1″ in the [globals] section of /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini, restarted xrdp and verified that it now only listen locally. Then set-up and ssh-tunnel from another machine with ‘ssh -L 3389:127.0.0.1:3389 ‘ and could succesfully run ‘rdesktop localhost’ and login on my remote machine without any noticeable slowdown (but I’m on a good network). Now I only have to figure out how to make a tunnel from a Windows machine, too.

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    • Indeed that's how I do it too. :)

      It's pretty easy to do it from Windows using puTTY – and as I said that's all to come in the SSH article I'm working on right now – it's already a pretty big article and that's only covering setting up the ssh server and ssh keypairs!

      If I can just get a couple of days to polish the article off and add some really cool stuff on it – including tips and tricks with puTTY on Windows. So please bear with me – this is all going to get covered very soon :)

      Regards!

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    • Anders, you may be interested in the new article here : Secure your systems with ssh on Linux and puTTY on Windows – Part 1

      Regards! ;)

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  • Hi,
    First of all, thanks for this great software.
    I got xrdp with vnc backend running without a problem, my issues lie in X11rdp. After messing around a little bit, I got to the point where the X session is started, but I cannot connect to it.
    These are the relevant parts of the config files:
    xrdp.ini:
    [xrdp7]
    name=sesman-X11rdp
    lib=libxup.so
    username=ask
    password=ask
    ip=127.0.0.1
    port=-1
    sesman.ini:
    [X11rdp]
    param1=-bs
    param2=-ac
    param3=-nolisten
    param4=tcp
    When I connect to the rdp session, all processes are started as expected, to me it looks as if the entire gnome session is running as it should:
    # ps faux
    root     13916  0.0  0.0  72344  1808 pts/0    S    14:45   0:00 /usr/sbin/xrdp-sesman
    root     14173  0.0  0.0  21656  1272 pts/0    S    15:01   0:00  \_ /usr/sbin/xrdp-sessvc 14175 14174
    Guest1   14174  0.0  0.0  12792   700 pts/0    S    15:01   0:00      \_ /usr/bin/ck-launch-session /usr/bin/dbus-launch –exit-with-session /bin/ba
    Guest1   14193  0.0  0.0  12272   276 ?        Ss   15:01   0:00      |   \_ /usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/ck-launch-session /usr/bin/dbus-launch –ex
    Guest1   14204  0.0  0.0  11464  1168 pts/0    S    15:01   0:00      |   \_ /bin/bash /home/Guest1/.xsession
    Guest1   14209  0.0  0.0 328976 10276 pts/0    Sl   15:01   0:00      |       \_ gnome-session –session gnome-fallback
    Guest1   14219  0.2  0.0 510364 18200 pts/0    Sl   15:01   0:00      |           \_ /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon
    Guest1   14237  0.0  0.0 235156  9020 pts/0    S    15:01   0:00      |           \_ metacity
    Guest1   14242  0.1  0.0 487776 19692 pts/0    Sl   15:01   0:00      |           \_ gnome-panel
    Guest1   14259  0.0  0.0 443536 12908 pts/0    Sl   15:01   0:00      |           \_ nm-applet
    Guest1   14260  0.6  0.0 507700 38956 pts/0    Sl   15:01   0:01      |           \_ mono /usr/lib/docky/Docky.exe
    Guest1   14264  0.0  0.0 327892 12596 pts/0    Sl   15:01   0:00      |           \_ gnome-sound-applet
    Guest1   14265  0.2  0.0 488372 22892 pts/0    Sl   15:01   0:00      |           \_ nautilus -n
    Guest1   14273  0.0  0.0 248244  9260 pts/0    Sl   15:01   0:00      |           \_ /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-fallback-mount-helper
    Guest1   14274  0.0  0.0 214688  6568 pts/0    Sl   15:01   0:00      |           \_ /usr/lib/policykit-1-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1
    Guest1   14275  0.0  0.0 329212 11268 pts/0    Sl   15:01   0:00      |           \_ bluetooth-applet
    Guest1   14313  0.0  0.0 142780  3924 pts/0    Sl   15:01   0:00      |           \_ telepathy-indicator
    Guest1   14323  0.0  0.0 182140  9600 pts/0    S    15:01   0:00      |           \_ /usr/lib/gnome-disk-utility/gdu-notification-daemon
    Guest1   14325  0.0  0.0 222172  5068 pts/0    Sl   15:02   0:00      |           \_ zeitgeist-datahub
    Guest1   14341  0.0  0.0 311784 12068 pts/0    Sl   15:02   0:00      |           \_ /usr/lib/evolution/3.2/evolution-alarm-notify
    Guest1   14343  0.0  0.0 415576 13496 pts/0    Sl   15:02   0:00      |           \_ update-notifier
    Guest1   14175  0.6  0.0  59148 28796 pts/0    S    15:01   0:01      \_ X11rdp :10 -geometry 800×600 -depth 16 -bs -ac -nolisten tcp
    root     14196  0.0  0.0  41564  1732 pts/0    Sl   15:01   0:00      \_ xrdp-chansrv
    Guest1   14207  0.0  0.0  26444   720 pts/0    S    15:01   0:00 /usr/bin/dbus-launch –exit-with-session /bin/bash /home/Guest1/.xsession
    Guest1   14208  0.2  0.0  26036  2092 ?        Ss   15:01   0:00 //bin/dbus-daemon –fork –print-pid 10 –print-address 12 –session
    Guest1   14211  0.0  0.0  56244  2672 ?        S    15:01   0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd
    Guest1   14223  0.0  0.0 157784  3360 pts/0    Sl   15:01   0:00 gnome-keyring-daemon –start –components=gpg
    Guest1   14233  0.0  0.0  53312  4116 ?        S    15:01   0:00 /usr/lib/libgconf2-4/gconfd-2
    Guest1   14235  0.0  0.0 230392  4712 pts/0    Sl   15:01   0:00 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gsd-printer
    Guest1   14239  0.0  0.0 309996  9636 ?        Sl   15:01   0:00 /usr/bin/gnome-screensaver –no-daemon
    Guest1   14250  0.0  0.0 207928  4408 ?        S<l  15:01   0:00 /usr/bin/pulseaudio –start –log-target=syslog
    Guest1   14254  0.0  0.0 132912  2780 ?        Sl   15:01   0:00 /usr/lib/d-conf/dconf-service
    Guest1   14280  0.0  0.0  65304  3756 ?        S    15:01   0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-gdu-volume-monitor
    Guest1   14291  0.0  0.0  54620  2424 ?        S    15:01   0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor
    Guest1   14293  0.0  0.0  68728  2584 ?        Sl   15:01   0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-afc-volume-monitor
    Guest1   14296  0.0  0.0  60608  3228 ?        S    15:01   0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-trash –spawner :1.1 /org/gtk/gvfs/exec_spaw/0
    Guest1   14298  0.0  0.0  60404  3488 ?        S    15:01   0:00 /usr/lib/telepathy/mission-control-5
    Guest1   14311  0.0  0.0  56104  2668 ?        S    15:01   0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-burn –spawner :1.1 /org/gtk/gvfs/exec_spaw/1
    Guest1   14331  0.0  0.0 132416 18628 ?        Sl   15:02   0:00 /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/zeitgeist-daemon
    Guest1   14332  0.0  0.0   4204   324 ?        S    15:02   0:00  \_ /bin/cat
    But using rdesktop it won't connect:
    Connection Log
    connecting to sesman ip 127.0.0.1 port 3350
    sesman connect ok
    sending login info to session manager, please wait…
    xrdp_mm_process_login_response: login successful for displa
    started connecting
    connecting…
    connect error
    connecting…
    connect error
    connecting…
    connect error
    connecting…
    connect error
    connection problem, giving up
    some problem
    In xrdp-sesman.log everything looks fine:
    [20120402-15:01:39] [INFO ] scp thread on sck 7 started successfully
    [20120402-15:01:39] [INFO ] ++ created session (access granted): username Guest1, ip 192.168.16.101:35864 – socket: 7
    [20120402-15:01:39] [INFO ] starting X11rdp session…
    [20120402-15:01:39] [INFO ] starting xrdp-sessvc – xpid=14175 – wmpid=14174
    I tried with both git head and 4cd0c118c273730043cc77b749537dedc7051571 and get the exact same situation. I've also tried adding the -uds parameter, but then the xsession doesn't start. What am I missing here??
     
    Regards,
    Tim

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    • Tim, hi

      I know you've stated you've tried both git head and the 4cd0c118c273730043cc77b749537dedc7051571 commit, but it honestly looks like the same problem as others had before using the checkout 4cd0c118c273730043cc77b749537dedc7051571 addendum.

      I can only suggest starting with a clean slate and going through all the steps again. I've performed these steps on Debian Wheezy and Ubuntu 11.10 lots of times now and apart from the recent change to the xrdp git source, everything works as per the article.

      Regards

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      • Hi Kevin,
        Thanks for your reply. I thought I tried everything, but removing everything and just restarting from scratch made it work. I think it was the "make uninstall" that did the trick, but I'm not sure though.
        Anyway, thanks for the great article, now of to have some fun with xrdp!
         
        Regards,
        Tim

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  • Dustin

    Having a bit of an issue, not sure why. Maybe a conflict somewhere.
    connecting to sesman ip 127.0.0.1 port 3350
    sesman connect ok
    sending login info to session manager, please wait…
    xrdp_mm_process_login_response: login successful for displa
    started connecting
    connecting…                                                                                                                                        connected ok
    & then the session window closes & leaves me with nothing
    Any guesses what may be the issue?

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    • Dan

      I'm actually getting a similar problem to Dustin.
      I'd noticed that if I tried to execute "X11rdp :1" I was getting a segmentation fault. I'd tried tracing it with gbd (which I didn't do very well) but it lead me to this post. It didn'r really help though as changing the value of the malloc call in that class and recompiling still threw the seg fault.
      Instead I reverted the svn to revision 295 which is dated around October; when Kevin posted his article. A recompile and reinstall of the code now has X11rdp running without any errors, however I'm still getting chucked out at exactly the same place. Looking at /var/log/xrdp-sesman.log doesn't give a lot of information:
      [20120407-14:48:03] [INFO ] scp thread on sck 7 started successfully
      [20120407-14:48:03] [INFO ] ++ created session (access granted): username [MY USER], ip [MY IP ADDRESS]:58790 – socket: 7
      [20120407-14:48:03] [INFO ] starting X11rdp session…
      [20120407-14:48:04] [INFO ] starting xrdp-sessvc – xpid=2675 – wmpid=2674
      [20120407-14:48:04] [INFO ] ++ terminated session:  username [MY USER], display :10.0, session_pid 2673, ip [MY IP ADDRESS]:58790 – socket: 7
      I'm going to look see if there anyway to put XRDP into a debug mode, or at least a more verbose logging to see if that helps.
      ~Dan
      P.S. I'm running Ubuntu 11.10 x64 (originally a server build, but I needed to install a desktop manager in order to configure myth and a few other apps which seem to think users can't do command line … grumbles)
      P.P.S I noticed that everytime I make a connection attempt XRDP increments the display number until it gets to 20 after which it prevents any futher connections. Not sure what/when it reverts back to zero but so far the only way I've found of reseting the counter is to reboot :-(

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      • Dustin, Dan, I'm just not seeing that behaviour, and I've used 32 and 64-bit versions of Ubuntu 11.10 :-/

        P.P.S I noticed that everytime I make a connection attempt XRDP increments the display number until it gets to 20 after which it prevents any futher connections. Not sure what/when it reverts back to zero but so far the only way I've found of reseting the counter is to reboot :-(

        Did you perform a ps aux | grep rdp at all during this, to see if there were any instances of X11rdp running?

        Regards

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        • Dan

          Runing a ps aux shows no instance of X11rdp running at any point in the process, the output is much the same as you have it in the screen shot you've posted:
          ~$ ps aux | grep rdp
          xrdp      1137  0.0  0.0  33596  3600 ?        Sl   14:43   0:00 /usr/sbin/xrdp
          root      1146  0.0  0.0  87664  2324 ?        S    14:43   0:00 /usr/sbin/xrdp-sesman
          daniel   13200  0.0  0.0  12056   896 pts/0    S+   19:17   0:00 grep –color=auto rdp
          ~Dan
           
           

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        • Dan

          Huh, thought that I'd replied to this … maybe I have and it's in moderation, in which case delete this one.
           
          In answer to your question, nope no X11rdp processes running.
          Looking at the man page for sesman.ini there are parameters to recycle the display number but they are currently ignored. I'm not sure if that is releated to my issue or not, I certainly don't think that I've been limited to connecting 20 times before this … that said though, I've not sat there all day trying to connect to my server.
          Was going to try compiling in debug, day has run away with me though. Perhaps a job for tomorrow, unless anyone has any ideas of where to look?
           
          Cheers,
          ~Dan

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        • Dan

          Hmm,
           
          A very sad 3 posts in a row, however I've found the issue that was causing the disconnect. I had to edit /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini and set max_bpp=16 in the [globals] section and xserverbpp=16 in the sesman-X11rdp [xrdp1] if you've followed Kevin's instructions.
          Dusin, don't know if you are checking back, but give that a go to see if it fixes things.
          Not sure why I can't do 24bit on the server (that worked find with the old xrdp) IIRC, oh well. connected and able to configure things now.
          ~Dan

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  • alta

    Thanks for the outstanding work.

    Is there a way to get the linux login screen instead of logging in via xrdp and loading the predefined session in home .xsession? IOW I’d like to select the session type dynamically, which in Mint can be done from its login screen.. Doing this through win7 rdp client.

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    • That's a very good question :)

      I tried to figure that one out before, and got as far as getting LightDM to display after logging into the initial xrdp login screen, but none of the Greeters used by lightdm worked.

      It's all down to how xrdp works – it's really designed to just log you into a session after authenticating. There's bound to be some way to do it though, and I'll have another look at it some time soon.

      I'm secretly hoping some other clever person out there will figure it out too ;)

      Regards

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  • Great, and I have it working on an Oracle Vbox VM hosted by Win7.  Using Ubuntu 11.10 for the guest OS, Vbox is the latest 4.1.12.  Great job of documentation.  I am a newbie to Ubuntu and retired IT geek, thanks again.
     
    Ed

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  • Dragan

    I'm running Ubuntu 11.10 desktop, 64bit. I tried everything step-by-step, exactly as you said I should do, but all I get at best is a gray flickering screen with a mouse pointer. Most of the time the RDP client (from any OS) just immidiatelly disconnects. Is this thing supose to work with Unity or not? I don't want to run Unity 2D, as some suggested be put in the .xsession file of my home folder, or even GNOME 3. The new GNOME is a far cry from the good old 2.x and the Unity 2D is total misery not having any 3D action at all. Why did they even bother putting a 2D on a desktop? Is there any hope? Please help. Thank you for all the hard work you put into this article so far and hope to hear from you soon.

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  • DanS

    Hey Kevin, Thanks for an awesome tutorial. I am having a slight problem:
     
    I followed the steps exactly as defined. I even have the exact same output as you do when I do the ps ax | grep rdp. When I go to my windows 7 box to test it, mstsc churns and churns, then finally tells me, nope, nothing doing. It's a vanilla install of Ubuntu 11.10 (with all updates applied). I keep thinking some kind of firewall is stopping it, but unless there is one on the ubuntu side by default, I can't find it.
     

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    • DanS, greetings

      Odd… let me check on a vanilla install again. I did that last week and all seemed to be well… Hmm. Perhaps more changes to the xrdp source? I'll check to see if there's been any commits recently too.

      I'll get back to you soon.

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    • DanS, hi again…

      I removed the compiled X11rdp from /opt , deleted the symbolic link /bin/X11rdp , uninstalled the compiled xrdp (by going into ~/xrdp.git and typing sudo make uninstall).

      Then I got rid of the xrdp.git and x11rdp_org directories in my user's home directory, and then re-downloaded both source trees again, performing the compilation and installation as per the article, in my Ubuntu 11.10 virtual machine.

      Again, RDP works fine for me, so it has nothing to do with any changes to the source code, as far as I can see.

      Check that you do not have the ufw firewall running – type sudo ufw status, it should return "Status: inactive" if it's not running.

      Other than that, I suggest you try again from scratch.

      My article isn't lying – it really does work :)

      Let me know how you got on.

      Regards!

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  • Dragan

    Kevin, this is the output of my ps ax | grep rdp :

     1220 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/xrdp-sessvc 1231 1230
     1273 ?        Sl     0:00 xrdp-chansrv
     2226 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/xrdp-sessvc 2228 2227
     2228 ?        S      0:02 X11rdp :11 -geometry 1440×900 -depth 16 -bs -ac -nolisten tcp
     2252 ?        Sl     0:00 xrdp-chansrv
    20113 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/xrdp
    20115 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/xrdp-sesman
    21112 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep –color=auto rdp
     
    Anything in it that you see being wrong? I'm running the nVidia graphics driver version 280.13.

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  • Dragan

    I have the Firestarter firewall running, but even when stoppd I still can't get it to work. The command sudo ufw status shows that it is inactive.

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  • Dragan

    Never mind, I won't bother you any more. If the title of this article is any indication then Gnome 3 is the only way to get this thing to work.

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    • Dragan, hi

      If you read my article, it explains how you can use the desktop environment of your choice – you just need to specify what you want to run in your ~/.xsession file, which will get executed once you've logged in via your RDP client.

      So you're not just stuck with Gnome – I even have an example of the Xfce desktop running, in the article :)

      Also, looking at your output from ps, it seems you do have an X11rdp X server running in the background. But you have 2 xrdp-sessvc instances running, where there should only be one, so, one of those is some kind of "lost" session.

      Perhaps try issuing a sudo service xrdp stop , then sudo kill any remaining process related to rdp, including those sessvc processes, then sudo service xrdp start, and try to log in again. Also check your ~/.xsession file for errors – I presume you have the .xsession file in the home directory of the user you're logging in as?

      From my point of view it's extremely difficult if not nigh on impossible to debug what's going on at your end, and in all honesty, if I were you I'd start the process again from scratch and see if you get better results this time. From my experience, anyone getting results that differ from the article, have made some kind of error or may have missed a step in the article.

      I have tested and re-tested the steps in the article, and have used Debian and Ubuntu 32 and 64-bit versions, and get consistent results every time. I also promptly update the article whenever someone makes a great suggestion, finds out some additional information, or there's been some change to the xrdp/X11rdp source which needs to be explained in the article.

      If you still can't get it working my advice to you is, keep at it and restart from scratch by removing /opt/X11rdp , removing the /bin/X11rdp symbolic link, performing a sudo make uninstall from the xrdp.git directory, then remove the xrdp.git and x11rdp_xorg directories, and starting the compilation/installation process again. You won't have to perform the apt-get install operations as those are already done and have no impact on the article second time round.

      Good luck and let me know how you get on :)

      Regards

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  • Robotball

    Was anyone able to use Vista as the client?  With Vista I get a black screen, not even an option login.

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  • robotball

    Not sure if this was posted.
    I am having trouble getting this to work.  I have tried 3 different flavors of Windows
    1. Windows Vista – just a black screen when connecting no login panel or anything
    2. Windows 7 (friend's PC) – receive a login panel, but after logging and connecting the connection is terminated
    3. Windows XP – I receive gnome-fallback can not be loaded

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  • NickB

    Really excellent walkthough – thanks!
    I have just used this on a recent version of 12.04 precise and can confirm that it all works like a charm. I would still like to be able to get a proper Gnome3 shell on the remote machine, but you can't have everything I guess.  I am now using IceWM for performance on the remotes and Gnome2 on the local network.
    On my relatively slow old file server it took almost 45 minutes for the build, but now it is done, runs fine.
    Sysinfo for the curious…
    AMD Sempron 3000+ 4GB RAM GeForce6150 500GB WD Root with 2TB native ZFS Raidz Data running Ubuntu12.04 64-bit 
    Many thanks once again!
    NickB
     

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  • Jim

    Nice work, Kevin – I've just followed this through on Ubuntu 11.04 on VMware Workstation 8, all looks good.  When I'm back at the office I'll re-migrate the image to my ESXi server where it belongs.  I can't reach the Subversion server from the office image – probably our corporate firewall blocks it – so this turns out to be the only practicable way to get a useable performance from the XRDP server on the ESXi image.  Without this tutorial and your earlier posting I wouldn't have dared to start on this exercise!
    Regards,
    Jim

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  • David

    Everything worked for me on Lubuntu 12.04.  I am however unable to specify what session I'd like to use in the .xsession file.  This is primarily due to the fact that I dont know what to put in for lxde or the default Lubuntu sessions.  If I remove the .xsession file it loads the lxde desktop.  How do I get it to load the Lubuntu one?  (at login on the physical machine they are different options).  I will be installing this on my other Xubuntu machine, which has the choice between xfce and xubuntu desktops.  I am curious on how to set up the .xsession file their as well for the Xubuntu default rather than the xfce.  Great tutorial though!
    -David

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  • Bill

    Hi Kevin,
    Great tutorial. Thank you for posting it. One quick question though:  My use case is a headless server with an auto-login at boot, there's a bunch of startup apps that load up with my auto-login. But when I rdp in, I can't access those apps that are already loaded. I can only launch new instances of them. Is it possible to limit x11rdp to a single session the way VNC does or should I stick to VNC if I want a single session? I'd ultimately like the speed of RDP, but with a single session…

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    • Hi Bill,

      Do you mean when your headless system boots it also starts a VNC server with the apps running in that?

      I don't think there's a way to to do that with the X11rdp server, offhand, although perhaps you could log in via RDP and then inside that access the VNC session by running a VNC client? You'd probably have to reduce the size of the VNC session screen to fit it into the RDP session's area.

      Regards

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      • Bill

         
        Hi Kevin,
         
        Thanks for the reply. Let me try to explain it better. By headless system, I mean I just setup a regular Ubuntu desktop install, but it sits in a closet with nothing but a network cable attached. When the system boots, it auto-logs into the desktop as normal and a few apps load (podcatcher, etc.) as if you were sitting down at it. 
         
        If I were to VNC into the machine at this point, it would use this same desktop that auto-loaded with those apps when the computer booted.
         
        However, I'd like to remove VNC from the equation altogether and just use RDP so it'd be faster. Is there any way to boot the computer so that it auto-logs into a desktop session (so my gui apps load), and from another machine be able to RDP to that same boot-up session instead of starting a new one? It seems to me that the session manager x11rdp uses is unable to attach to that initial startup sessio (or chooses not to by design). I'm just trying to confirm if that's the case before I move on. Thanks.
         
        Disclaimer: I'm a linux newb with years of windows experience, so please pardon my poor explainations. I used to run my windows machine this way. It would auto-load my admin account at boot, and I could remote into it at any time to monitor the apps that loaded.

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        • Hi BIll,

           

          Yes you're correct. The X11rdp is basically an X server in its own right. There's no way to attach to the applcations already running on the X server on your autologin session, it's simply not designed that way :)

           

          Regards

           

          Kevin.

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  • belldandy

    XUbintu 12.04 is used.
    It checked till the place which does as the procedure of this report and installs x11rdp and xrdp and where connection is possible.
    Although a language setup of XUbuntu was made into Japanese and the Japanese keyboard is connected, in the client side, it is recognized as an English keyboard.
    What should be done for making it recognize as a Japanese keyboard?

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  • Fabio

    Hi Kevin,
    thanks a lot for this guide, it is giving me some VERY usefull hints!
    I have a question related to xrdp: do you have idea how to make a RDP network sharing working? I configured my Remote Desktop Client (on WindowsXP) to share some local folders, but no idea how to make them visible from xrdp machine.
    Bye, keep on with this great work!
    Fabio

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    • Fabio, thanks

       

      That's an excellent question – you could probably do this with some SSH port forwarding trickery – by using puTTY to forward the SMB port(s) to your target machine, which in theory could access the client's drives.

      I might try to find this one out – it's probably a very similar technique to my other article on getting audio with your RDP connection.

      Regards

      Kevin.

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  • Emiliano

    Thank you so much for this extraordinary guide. It worked like magic! I'm very happy with the results. Thanks again!

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  • BIG thanks for this very good howto! :) There are only two newbe questions I have:
    Only root is able to connect via RDP now.. how can I set the permission to another user? Because I dont want to work with root user..
    And I tried all this on ubuntu 12.04, where I want to work with the classic gnome "gnome-panel".. what should be in the .xsession file to load the classic gnome (gnome-panel)?
    Greets,
    Karsten

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    • Karsten, greetings…

      If you can only log in as root, then I think you followed the procedure incorrectly – note though that I haven't as yet checked the procedure against Ubuntu 12.04, so it might be something to do with that, although earlier in the comments section here someone has said it works for 12.04.

      I'm in the middle of a large project at the moment. After that's done I will try this on 12.04.

      With regards to the gnome panel, there is information in this article (and another article in its own right) on how to do that :)

      Regards!

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  • Stefan

    Hi Kevin,
    thank you so much for this superb  tutorial. Everthing is working on my linux host (Linux Mint 12 Lisa) as it should. Client is a windows 7 laptop
    But i have a question about the session which is created on my linux pc when connecting on it.
    Is it possible to increase my rights – so i can shutdown, restart the linux pc and so on? As i would work localy on this pc.
    Greetings and many thanks again!
    Stefan

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    • Stefan, thanks :)

      If you can't do something from the menu which requires permission, then try doing it via gksudo. Try hitting ALT-F2. This should bring up a "run" window, then type "gksudo" followed by what you want to do. "gksudo reboot" for example.

      Let me know if that works for you.

      Regards!

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      • Stefan

        Hello Kevin,
        thank you for this hint. It works with gksudo, but in my opinion this is just a workaround :)
        Is there a way to get the X-Session with same permissions/rights as if i would be logged in localy on my ubuntu pc ?
        Regards

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        • Stefan, hi again :)

          Yes, it is a workaround ;)

          Blame PolicyKit, not me (or RDP)! :)

          It's PolicyKit that is preventing remote users from performing priveleged operations on their remote desktop sessions.

          Remote sessions are classed by PolicyKit as being "inactive" – i.e. not directly running on a local terminal, or perhaps the user is physically at the machine but is using a different virtual terminal.

          It's a huge PITA for remote users.

          I found this exchange from the PolicyKit mailing list;

           

          is "no" as a typical default for inactive sessions the right thing to do?

           
          David Zeuthen david at fubar.dk 
          Wed Aug 12 13:07:34 PDT 2009
          Previous message: is "no" as a typical default for inactive sessions the right thing to do?
          Next message: polkit 0.94
          Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
          On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 17:11 +0100, James Westby wrote:
          > Hi,
          > Many policies specify "no" for inactive sessions, which makes sense
          > given the name, but the behaviour of consolekit means that users
          > who log in over ssh are considered inactive, and so they cannot
          > use apps with such policies. 
           
          Actually that is not accurate. The way ConsoleKit works is that it has
          (at least) two attributes for a session
           
           1. whether the session is on a seat on the local console
           2. whether the session is currently active
           
          where "currently active" means whether the session is in the foreground.
          For example, if you VT switch to a Linux console, your GNOME session
          will transition to inactive.
           
          > This has a particular impact on
          > LTSP and NX users, as SSH is the primary way to access the machine,
          > and so they typically cannot perform any admin tasks using GUIs.
           
          Well, LTSP and NX users probably _shouldn't_ be allowed to do this in
          the first place since such sessions typically run on a completely
          managed box… so current behavior is pretty good I think.
           
          Now, we probably should have some way of allowing users at remote seats
          (e.g. LTSP, NX, SunRay) to perform privileged operations on devices
          attached to their seat. For example, mount local USB disks and so forth.
           
          This is a lot of work to do right and involves
           
           - teaching ConsoleKit about remote seats
             - see the CK list for some work happening in that area right now
           
           - tagging each device about what seat it belongs to (involves udev)
           
           - teaching mechanisms and polkit about seats
           
          It also requires that you actually do thin client right, e.g. instead of
          the games that LTSP plays for managing storage, you do things like USB
          over IP instead (e.g. so each connected client has a virtual USB host
          adapter).
           
          > I'm unsure as to the rationale for this "default default", and wondered
          > if you could shed some light on it?
           
          The main reason we normally don't allow inactive sessions to do much is
          this. Assume that user Mallory logs in at console on a public campus
          computer and locks the screen. Now Alice walks up to the console and
          logs in via fast user switching. We really don't want to expose Alice
          against programs running in Mallory's existing session… 
           
          For example, if Mallory still had the authority to make privileged
          components do stuff he could potentially spy on Alice – or at least
          disrupt her session.
           
          Another reason is that helps avoid a race against two instances of a
          policy agent each in a different session.
           
          Hope this clarifies.
           
               David
           
          That was from 2009, and it doesn't look like much has changed since then. Basically everyone using a modern Linux distro which relies on PolicyKit will have this problem when logged in remotely.
           
          Now, the way around this might be to change all the "no"'s in your system's policykit policies to "yes"'s – I haven't tested this yet because I'm working on something cool which is soon to be released ;) The problem with that is, if the PolicyKit package(s) get upgraded or updated, I think those settings will be overridden. It seems whoever came up with PolicyKit hasn't worked in the real world, or, doesn't realise just how much more important remote desktop operation is becoming these days.
           
          Regards!
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  • Violator

    I'm really in doubt how much of this article to use and if I have to use the previous one as well, needs some cleanup.
    Tried to follow the 11.10 guide step by step on Xubuntu 12.04, but ended up with the same results as a previous user, it will only allow me to log in via x11 sesman vnc and not the rdp session.

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    • It's working for me on Ubuntu 12.04 – I haven't tested it on Xubuntu – but if you bear with me for now there's something I'm going to release quite soon which is pretty cool, to do with getting RDP running on your machine :)

      As for Xubuntu – well that's a custom variant of standard Ubuntu, and I never claimed it worked on anything other than 11.10 which was the "hot distro" at the time I originally published the article.

      However, let me have a look at Xubuntu and I'll get back to you.

      Regards!

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    • Violator, hi again…

      If you want to have another go at this, please see the utility I wrote which does all the installation automatically for you.

      Read all about it here : http://scarygliders.net/2012/05/23/the-scarygliders-x11rdp-o-matic-and-rdpsesconfig-hotness-upon-hotness/ ;)

      Let me know how you got on.

      Regards

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  • Ken

    Stefan, check out my comments on the first page on this(sometime in Feb..)..I hit this problem as well. You can change the policykit as per http://askubuntu.com/questions/47942/when-machine-is-headless-user-is-no-longer-privileged to get around this.
    Works well on my install of 11.04.  Can run all the graphical utilities which require admin without any issues.

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  • Benito

    test

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  • hammurapi

    Hello Kevin, thanks for guide. It almost worked for me, but not completely. After loging in to xrdp-sesman, the Xsession is not started. I am stuck at a black screen with the "Connection Log" window. (This window has shows this text: 
    "connecting to sessman ip 127.0.0.1 port 3350
    sesman connect ok
    sending login info to sesman
    xrdp_mm_process_login_response: login successful for displa
    started connecting
    connecting…
    connected ok" and an "OK" Button)
    I cannot press the "OK" Button. The only way out is to terminate the rdesktop process…
    Do you have any idea why the session is not starting?
     
    Hammurapi…
     
     
     

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  • AndrewT

    I've had a problem on ubuntu 10.10 (virtual host) until I removed
    "–session=gnome-fallback" from ~/.xsession
    So have a look at ~/.xsession-errors if nothing helps :-)
    Now everything run OK
    Great job Kevin, thanks a lot!

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  • AndrewT

    BTW, it's better to use
    checkinstall –type=debian –pkgname=xrdp –pkgversion=0.6.0 –install=yes –nodoc –default
    instead of
    make install
    for xrdp packadge because it'll be seen as a regular packet in a system

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  • Jesse

    Hi I followed this entire procedure on Ubuntu 10.04. When I try to connect from win 7 I get the following error:
    Because of a security error the client could not connect to the remote computer. Verify that you are logged on to the network, and then try connecting again

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  • DHAmoKK

    Hi.
    I'm trying to set up a small and powersaving home server with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Server x64. Since I'm using Windows, you can imagine that I'm very unused to a console. I do know some of the console commands (like ls, sudo), but I would've to look up everything in google and forums to configure the server. So I need a GUI and it should be remote controlled with rdp/vnc from a Windows 7 machine (the main system) and so your how-to is exactly, what I was looking for.
    I chose KDE as my favourite GUI and followed your guide and I think everything went fine until step 4 "Bingo!" … it does NOT work for me :/ It's exactly the same problem what dustin and dan got, but for me it didn't help to set the color depth to 16bits.
    I also tried your script and LDXE, but now I don't get a connection at all.
    What did I do wrong?

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    • Hi DHAmoKK

      I don't think you're doing anything wrong as such – this article was written before 12.04 LTS Server existed, and the utilities were only tested on the Desktop versions – my fault for not making that clear – although on saying that in my defense the fact they use Zenity (which can't be seen on the Server editions without installing Gnome or some other desktop environment with the zenity package installed anyway)  should have made one come to the conclusion the V1 utilties were tested only on the desktop editions :)

      However, I'm just about to release Version 2 of the utilities which have a text dialog interface and bug fixes, rewrites, new command line switches, and more, so, if you bear with me for a day or so then perhaps try this new version out? It'll work straight from the Server editions which have no desktop environment installed by default. I'm currently in the testing stage before releasing, so, stay tuned :)

      Best regards!

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      • DHAmoKK

        Hi.
         
        Thanks very much for your reply and your ongoing work :D
        Well, to MY defense, I have to say that as a Windows-User I don't know, what zenity is, so I just installed the package and ran the script ;) Plus, you said, it 'might' work on other Debian versions, too, so I just gave it a try.
        But yes, I noticed that the compiling part was done in a few miliseconds, way too fast (while compiling manually took between 14-15 minutes on a virtual machine with 2 processor cores and 4GB, while the virtual disk resides on a SSD). So I think, the script was missing the compiler, too.
        Well, thanks again for your hard work and I'll gladly wait for a new version. I might even donate a small amount for that ;)

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        • Heheh have a thumbs-up from me ;)

           

          Keep an eye on the front page within the next day or so – I'll announce the release of version 2 in a new post there.

          Oh and Zenity is basically a way for command line scripts to display messages, notifications, and other types of "window-y" boxes, on a user's desktop. V1 of my utilities ONLY used Zenity to display menus, messages etc. as my original motive was to present the user with a nice GUI front-end – hence the reason the utility blazed through on your 12.04 LTS server – must've been a lot of "cannot find zenity"-type messages in the console ;)

          Regards!

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  • Cristian Adam

    Thank you for this tutorial. I've tried it on a Ubuntu 11.10 and it works™!
    I had to find a different source for x11rdp, because the svn repo didn't work for me. Found a git repo here:  http://github.com/Magister/x11rdp_xorg71.git
    I've noticed that my keyboard (romanian) was not working and that after a while white color in KDE becomes darkgrey. I suspect some handle leak somewhere, because if I do a /etc/init.d/xrdp restart everything works fine.
    I've also tried to build the newest stuff from http://github.com/FreeRDP/xrdp.git, namely the X11R7.6 version, but didn't work as expected, so I've gone back to the working solution :)

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    • Thanks! Glad it worked. No idea about the KDE white—>grey thingy, never seen that behaviour except on a bad monitor ;)

      And you now know the reason why I use the older source tree – it works, and too much is happening right now to the bleeding-edge source to be useful. :)

      Regards!

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      • Cristian Adam

        Unfortunately I had to revert to VNC because I cannot run OpenGL applications over xrdp :(
        I hope that one day xrdp could allow OpenGL applications to work because the windows Remote Desktop client beats all VNC clients out there, you don't have any CAPS LOCK problems, and you can use Alt-Tab on Linux.

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  • Gusti

    Working on 12.04 , and i got clipboard working now :) , but still no sound :(

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  • Christus

    Hi,
     
    I have tried this several times now.
    I have install X11rdp when I rdp it connects and the terminal session works fine how ever I am not able to see the desktop.
    All I see is black and white dots.
     
    Any suggestions why?
     
    Thanks

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    • Christus

      Well after few attempts with the combination of XFCE it worked fine.
      Thanks

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      • Whoops! And I replied to your initial comment before checking the spam folder for this reply. :)

        Oh well, glad it worked out for you.

        Regards

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    • Hi Christus,

      You haven't mentioned what linux distribution you are running, it helps to know this ;)

      Also, why do the manual method above, when I wrote a utility that does all this for you, just click on this link and you can see what it does and download it (it's free!) and give that a try.

      Let me know how you got on!

      Regards.

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      • Christus

        Hi Kevin
        It's Ubutu 12.04 LTS
        Well I could have used the automated version. Any How it works now and Thanks again ;-)
        Christus

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  • Christus

    With Combination of XFCE it worked fine.
     
    Cool.
     
    Thanks

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  • peter

    Hi
    Am new to to this forum and also a newbie to the xdrp concept. I have ubuntu 10.10 ltsp server with some thin clients pxe booting into the server. However i want to introduce other terminals(WT3125SE) which can only use xdrp to boot into the server. I have done all the steps in the tutorial but i still keep getting this error when i try to login as client xrdp_mm_process_login_response login failed. Can anyone out there help me out?
    Thanks in advance… 

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  • KAI

    When using XRDP how do I make it use cinnamon for the default desktop on Ubuntu 12 Thank you KAI

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  • Faisal Ansari

    When its time for me to test RDP from another computer, this is the screen that I get after login:

    Any ideas what's wrong with my setup?
     
    Thanks

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  • dme

    Hi Kevin, 
    thank you for your hard and continous work on this!
    I first tried ur script with no success. I just get a black screen when connection from Win Xp/7 to my Debian 6.0.5.
    Going through the steps manually i am stuck at: "Okay from another computer try running your RDP client and see if you can connect and log in to an RDP session…"
    Thats where i only get a black screen with no login window like Robotball postet earlier. 
     /var/log/xrdp-sesman.log just shows:
    [20120730-18:43:37] [WARN ] [init:45] libscp initialized
    [20120730-18:43:38] [CORE ] starting sesman with pid 31077
    [20120730-18:43:38] [INFO ] listening…
     
    Any ideas/hints on where to look?
    TYIA

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    • dme, hi again…

      From the messages above it certainly looks like xrdp is up and running and listening for connection attempts.

      Can you try changing the colour depth settings on your client? Try changing the colour depth to 16 or 24 (or even 8) – see what happens.

      Regards

      Kevin.

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      • dme

        Tried different color depths and resolutions with no success.

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      • dme

        Ok i did an strace on xrdp:
        strace -f -o strace2.out -p 22959
         
        Process 22959 attached – interrupt to quit
        Process 31093 attached                 <–connected with mstsc
        Process 31093 detached               <– this looks like it should not happen?
        Process 31094 attached                <– automaticly reattached
        Process 31094 detached               <– closed mstsc
        Process 22959 detached               <– stopped strace
         
        The whole strace2.out is here: http://www.korthing.de/strace2.zip
        The fun starts at line #67394. And line 67398 shows:
         
        22959 bind(5, {sa_family=AF_FILE, path="/tmp/xrdp_000059af_process_self_term_event_00000030"}, 110) = -1 EACCES (Permission denied)
         
        Which is bad i guess. But please have a look at the whole file. I am not experienced in reading straces.

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      • dme

        I must have screwed up something with the usergroups/rights. 
        The /tmp dir is 755 root:root. Is that what it is supposed to be? Setting it to 777 gives me a login screen but after putting in my login info i am stuck at "sending login info to sesman".
        I guess there are some other dirs where i do not have the right permissions.
        The user i used to follow your guide is a new user with just its own group. And the user is in the sudouers file. Should i set anything different?

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        • Hmm, to be perfectly honest, I think you should start from scratch and try the utilities I wrote – they DO work on Debian 6.0.5 – I have tested them on that and many other distros.

          This manual method tutorial was originally written well before Debian 6.0.5 existed, and whilst I updated it every now and again when new Distribution releases arrived, I haven't tested the manual method on 6.0.5

          There's a lot going on in my life right now, so, I haven't had much time recently to spend on testing this method on 6.0.5 or any other of the more modern distro versions. I have spent the last few months getting the automatic scripts working, tested, rewritten, tested again, bugfixed, retested, more bugfixes etc etc etc , so really, I highly recommend you start from scratch and use the utilities. I'll be writing another blog entry soon on what's going on in my life and why blogging will be light for the next few months – big changes in my life ahead :)

          If you find actual bugs with xrdp – you're best to contact the xrdp & X11rdp author Jay Sorg, who is a rather helpful chap. Look for the xrdp-devel mailing list and join that as well. Also, read the previous mailing-list messages as they may contain some info related to your problems – although to be honest it looks like something went wrong when you tried installing using this manual method :)

          Best regards!

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