This RDP FAQ will get updated and/or added to as time goes by…
-1) “Where can I get support for X11RDP-o-Matic and/or Xrdp?”
X11RDP-o-Matic was a project I started a long time ago, and have have not worked on for a long time now. X11RDP-o-Matic is also basically just an automated build bash script which builds xrdp and x11rdp.
Maintenance of X11RDP-o-Matic is now undertaken by someone else. If you need support on X11RDP-o-Matic, please go to the repository on Github at https://github.com/scarygliders/X11RDP-o-Matic/issues
If you need general support on Xrdp itself, go to the Github repository at https://github.com/neutrinolabs/xrdp
0) “HOW DO I DOWNLOAD X11RDP-o-MATIC?”
The X11RDP-O-Matic Information Page has all the details. You should read through all of that page from top to bottom, and the download instructions are there. Reading through the Info Page is advised as it gives you all the useful information on what o-matic is , its options, and how it does what it does.
1) “Will I be able to reconnect to a desktop session which I left running on my system at <insert location here> ?”
No. Linux RDP does NOT work in the same way as Windows – their methodologies for displaying a Desktop are completely different.
Linux uses Xorg, which creates a Display for each login session. The X11rdp back-end also creates its own Display for each RDP session created.
Each Display is seperate from each other. Any work or programs you run on your native Display, are separate from the RDP sessions.
Workaround :
Create an RDP session at your local target machine (e.g. the one at your office) , and perform all your work inside that session. Then when you’re out of the office, simply reconnect to that target system, with the same bitdepth , width, and height settings you used when you created the session. You will be reconnected to that session, and will be able to carry on whatever work you left running in it.
2) “It didn’t work”
I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you :)
If it’s the article on how to do it manually, then please take into account when it was written, the date of the last change to it, and read the comments.
If it’s the X11rdp-o-matic then, yes there are undoubtedly bugs and things not working – it is an ongoing project after all :)
Lastly, please include ALL pertinent data pertaining to the problem ; it helps if I know the exact distribution you’re using, right down to if it’s a “Server” variant or a “Desktop” variant, and the exact symptoms.
3) “I installed X11rdp-o-Matic and…”
No you did not install X11rdp-o-Matic. You downloaded it and then ran it. This then did all the things necessary to compile and install xrdp and X11rdp, automatically, so that you didn’t have to do it manually.
4) “X11rdp-o-Matic ran fine but I’m having problems with clipboard/sound/crashing/etc….”
Whilst X11rdp-o-Matic managed to compile xrdp and X11rdp, you have more than likely encountered limitations or bugs in xrdp and/or X11rdp. You should consult the xrdp-devel mailing list archives.
You can find the mailing list at : https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xrdp-devel
If you don’t find similar problems and/or solutions, then you should report your problem to those upstream authors on their Issues page on Github. I advise you to look at the Issues pages, to see if the problem you are facing has already been reported.
The issues page on github for Xrdp is here : https://github.com/neutrinolabs/xrdp/issues
5) “Ugh! Another one who has EVIL ADVERTS on their site! :( ” / “Asking for Donations!?!? :( “
(Yes I actually got an email about the adverts…)
Yah well look, I have to fund the VPS for the web server – I don’t get it for free. Don’t you think all this research & development I do should at least get something other than just gratitude back? :)
I’m all for Open Source and all, but at the end of the day, doing this costs time, effort, and money :)
Also, if I can politely request that you whitelist scarygliders.net in your ad-blocker?
I only use Google Adsense, and as far as I’m aware they don’t serve malicious adverts that try to take over your system.
more to come if and when the need arises….
I can not install, do
sudo ./X11RDP-o-Matic.sh –justdoit
I get the error:
…
gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I../.. -I../../common -DXRDP_CFG_PATH=\”/etc/xrdp\” -DXRDP_SBIN_PATH=\”/usr/sbin\” -DXRDP_SHARE_PATH=\”/usr/share/xrdp\” -DXRDP_PID_PATH=\”/var/run/xrdp\” -DXRDP_FUSE -g -O2 -MT rail.o -MD -MP -MF .deps/rail.Tpo -c -o rail.o rail.c
rail.c:31:35: fatal error: X11/extensions/Xrandr.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
make[3]: *** [rail.o] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/sezuka/X11RDP-o-Matic/xrdp/sesman/chansrv’
make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/sezuka/X11RDP-o-Matic/xrdp/sesman’
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/sezuka/X11RDP-o-Matic/xrdp’
make: *** [all] Error 2
(Reading database … 125348 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace x11rdp 0.9.0-1 (using …/Xorg/x11rdp_0.9.0-1_amd64.deb) …
Unpacking replacement x11rdp …
Setting up x11rdp (0.9.0-1) …
dpkg: error processing /home/sezuka/X11RDP-o-Matic/packages/xrdp/*.deb (–install):
cannot access archive: No such file or directory
Errors were encountered while processing:
/home/sezuka/X11RDP-o-Matic/packages/xrdp/*.deb
update-rc.d: /etc/init.d/xrdp: file does not exist
./X11rdp-o-matic.sh: line 648: /etc/init.d/xrdp: No such file or directory
X11rdp and xrdp should now be fully installed, configured, and running on this system. One last thing to do now is to configure which desktop will be presented to the user after they log in via RDP. Use the RDPsesconfig utility to do this.
Sergey, hi
What distribution?
It looks like some (or all) of the required packages needed to compile were not installed – I cannot tell because not enough information has been provided.
Ubuntu Server 12.04.4 LTS x64 + LXDE
libxrandr-dev package has not been installed.
Thank you.
I’ve added libxrandr-dev to the list of packages to be installed, to o-matic’s devel branch.
Now commited to github.
Thanks for the feedback, by the way.
Regards
Thanks for you message, i can fix same issue with ‘sudo apt-get install libxrandr-dev’.
I installed X11rdp-o-matic on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and everything appeared to work. I ran RDPsesconfig and have selected both Gnome Classic and Xfce. When I run RDC (from Windows 2012 R2 with 2560×1600 screen) I get the login screen but after entering credentials I get a blank screen. Not sure what log files to look at.
One other fact, my Linux server is running on Azure.
OK Figured it out. Issue with my high resolution screen. Is there a way to adjust the resolution the client will use?
OK Dumb question, the RDC allows for varying resolutions. Works great. Thanks.
I need your help and I a not shy to make a donation.
I installed it in Ubuntu Server latest, with Unity, which is gnome.
It installs without a hitch, and then I run the configuration script and it produces an .xsession file with this line
gnome-session –session=gnome-fallback
But when I connect, at any resolution, I log in, and get a black screen. I can see the mouse moving, not all else is black.
If you contact me via email I can give you the credentials so you may take a look.
Philip
Philip, hi.
Seriously, forget Gnome, or Unity – they’re going down a route which entails using 3D accelerated graphics, composited displays, etc etc.
Try Xfce instead. Or even KDE. Or if you really need Gnome, try the MATE desktop.
Modern Gnome isn’t even trying to be rdp-friendly any more.
Regards.
Couple of questions:
1. I installed X11rdp a while back on Debian squeeze . How do I find what version of X11rdp is running?
2.Cut-N-paste issue: I rdp from a Windows m/c to this Debian box , then rdp onto another Windows server–call it Wins2. I can cut and paste between Debian and Wins2. But not over the first X11rdp session.
Any ideas where to start looking for the fault?
Thanks in advance.
Hi Prasad
From a command prompt type
X11rdp :[displaynum]– in the following example I used :44 …$ X11rdp :44InitOutput:
X11rdp, an X server for xrdp
Version 0.7.0
I don’t have an answer for that, sorry. Best to try Google, or the xrdp-devel mailing list.
Regards
Hello,
I’m using X11rdp on Mate16 x64, it works fine & fast.! :-)
The problem what I have is, if I start gparted for example the Authentication dialog appears on the Host, not in the RDP session.
Do you have any ideas to solve this issue?
German is my first language, not english. :-))
Cheers Thomas
Hello, may I ask why X11rdp-o-matic is downloading 100+ packages and compiling X from scratch? Couldn’t you just use libraries shipped with the OS? Correct me if I am wrong but isn’t X11rdp just a bunch of patches that were introduced in neutrinolabs/xrdp repo that build X server which actually just translates X11 stuff to RDP? Or the problem is that those X server patches are bound to certain version of X server?
Hi Lauri, and good question :)
Your last sentence is the reason. Actually, X11rdp is not just a set of patches but a full X Server in its own right.
Whereas xrdp gets packaged by distributions, X11rdp does not. This is due to the X11rdp code being tied to an older version of Xorg.
You cannot use the current Xorg source and headers – it just won’t compile. This is why a gazillion older Xorg source packages have to be downloaded and compiled.
It’s a pain to do this manually, so I wrote o-matic to do this automatically. Literally thousands of people have used it.
If you need deeper information than the above, you should ask Jay Sorg – the author of xrdp and X11rdp – and the other contributors to that code.
The xrdp mailing list is in the FAQ.
Hope that helps!
Regards
Kevin.
Hey Kevin,
Got a quick question for you. I just updated to Ubuntu Gnome 14.04 and getting xrdp running was a pain. I installed it from the repo and can’t get gnome-fallback,flashback or whatever working. Pretty sure it’s problems with the 2d gnome. I had to switch to LXDE (or xfce4) to get logged in at all and even then I can’t mount USB drives from nautilus or even logout. But all that’s beside the point. I was playing with Fedora 20 and installed xrdp from their repo, and right out of the box I can connect using windows RDP with full access to the gnome 3.10 shell environment and don’t have to rely on any kind of fallback. What gives with Ubuntu that we have to fall back to these watered down window managers while in Fedora we don’t have to? (Or will running your O-matic script fix that for me??)
Thanks!
Eric
Hi Eric,
Interesting you could run gnome shell over xrdp on Fedora 20… but I’m wondering if that’s because there, you’re using the VNC back-end rather than the RDP back-end that the X11rdp server provides. I bet if you compiled X11rdp for Fedora then gnome shell wouldn’t work.
Speaking of which, there’s a spin-off of O-Matic written for Red Hat based distros available call XRDP-RH-Matic which you could try using on Fedora 20. The github repo for that can be found at https://github.com/metalefty/X11RDP-RH-Matic . It’d be interesting to find out if gnome shell ran ok when using the X11rdp back-end server.
Basically, the main reason Gnome Shell won’t run under the X11rdp X Server is because Gnome is expecting a certain kind of 3D acceleration which is not present in X11rdp – I can’t even run Gnome SHell on my native Debian workstation because I’m using fglrx which doesn’t provide a certain GL functionality that Gnome Shell is looking for.
Regards
No matter what I do, keep getting xrdp_mm_process_login response login failed/
If you don’t provide FULL details of the system you’re trying to get xrdp running on, the version/branch of xrdp you’ve tried to compile, a full writeup of what procedure you’ve performed to get to the “can’t log in” stage, then it’s impossible for anyone to help you.
See section (2) of this very FAQ you’ve posted a reply to.
Regards
Thanks alot for your work! Its very stable und useful!
Is it possible to install the debs directly without the build process before?
That would save some time on vps reinstallation.
If yes an instruction would be nice to have.
Regards
Andreas, thanks :)
Yes you should be able to install the debs. See the Packages section in http://scarygliders.net/x11rdp-o-matic-information/ for details – note that I’ll have to update the bit saying about manually updating the rc scripts – that should all now be working, if you use the DEVEL version of o-matic from github.
I’ll need to spend a bit of time making a full new release from the devel branch – hopefully soon – but I’m trying to get another project completed and out the door, which should be Soon[tm] ;)
Hey, Kevin,
First, I’ve wandered to the X11RDP-o-matic central downloads page and I find a download link for version 2.5 but no link to download version 3.10. Can you tell me where on this site to go to download version 3.10? I seem stuck in loop of pages here.
Second, I ran the X11RDP-o-matic and then months later updated my OS version. Since then you’ve updated x11rdp-o-matic as well. How can I wipe out the source and packages an older version of x11rdp-o-matic downloaded/installed so I can run it with all the most current sources?
Nevermind to the first question. I found it. But I could still use clean-up help on the second question.
Hi Edward,
I’ll have a re-think on how to point people directly to the download link.
To the second point – I’m assuming you originally used an older version of o-matic.
If so, then stop the xrdp service, then simply remove the /opt/X11rdp directory and subdirectories.
You should also disable the init script for xrdp.
Then download and run the new version of o-matic – try the devel branch from the github repo, instructions are on the Information Page.
If you need further advice then please don’t hesitate to ask. I just caught your questions right before going to bed and thought I’d spend a few minutes replying to you before doing so ;)
Best regards
Kevin.
Wow, just amazing!! I was having a hell of a time with Lubuntu’s xrdp. Once I ran your script, everything started working!! Note on polkit: This post sure helped a great deal, http://askubuntu.com/questions/47942/when-machine-is-headless-user-is-no-longer-privileged/54053#54053
Everything is working!! Copy/Paste, PolKit, etc….
THANKS A BUNCH!!
Thanks!
It’s great to know that things I’m doing are helping people – makes me feel I’m making a difference in the world ;)
Best regards,
Kevin.
Regarding polkit from http://askubuntu.com/questions/47942/when-machine-is-headless-user-is-no-longer-privileged/54053#54053. I copied the result file ‘local.pkla’ to /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/ This is on an Lubuntu installation.
And again thanks for the link – most helpful.
Thank you, sir.
Ran the script and it worked its magic. Thank you very much!
One quick question that you may be able to answer. When I try to run rails (as in Ruby on Rails) from a terminal in the RDC session (Windows 7 to Crunchbang), it says there is no such command, yet I can run the command no problem on the target machine. Perhaps some sort of terminal shell setting?
Thanks again and good luck with your future endeavours!
Hi, I have question about XRDP (I don´t know if this right place to make this question). I try to explain my thoughts… I have Ubuntu server running multiple X-displays (:0, :1, :2 etc…). Is it possible to point RDP to spesific display (in case that external operating system is using Ubuntus X-server)? I dont want to “RDP” main display.
Hi Kevin. Big thanks for X11rdp-o-Matic. It’s very good for me and for my company. I’ve installed it in Ubuntu 14.10 with LXDE server. The system working great, but I have some issues with users session. When user log iff, some user process are present on the my server.
Can you advice what I need to do? Anyway, if you don’t have time for that, I am very appreciate you for this X11rdp.
I am web developer and freelancer, if you need my free help with website or Russian language translation, let me know.
Best, Antony.
Hi Antony, and thanks.
Perhaps ask on the xrdp-devel mailing list. Link to that is provided on the FAQ page on this site.
Also, you might consider creating an Issue on the xrdp github page (not o-Matic, xrdp!)
Regards
Hi!
It seems that this marvellous script is not working on 15.04. Somehow it is not assembling xrdp due to libtool mismatch – even though libtool is installed properly.
But if you take pre-compiled packages from 14.04 and run them with dpkg-i should work ok.
On Ubuntu 15.04 “libtool” is not enough. You will need the package “libtool-bin”, as well.
Hello, we installed X11RDP-o-Matic on a physical “Mint 17.2” and a Virtual “Mint 17.2”, the only difference is one is virtual and the other is physical. The physical works fine, my virtual, when I RDP from my windows 7 system or MAC RDP, it closes port 3389 on my Mint virtual system. Any idea as to why?
thank you for your help.
HI, two things…
1) “we installed X11RDP-o-Matic….” no you didn’t, as the FAQ says :)
2) o-Matic’s done its job and compiled/installed xrdp & x11rdp for you – any problems with the actual operation of xrdp/X11rdp should be directed to the authors. Try here : https://github.com/neutrinolabs/xrdp/issues
Regards
Although I really like this program, I can only install it on debian/ubuntu systems. It would be GREAT to have this program for RPM based systems such as centos, redhat, and fedora. Hopefully you can consider this request.
Thanks,
Tony
Hi Tony,
A nice chap made a port of the X11RDP-o-Matic script for Red Hat-based systems!
You can find it at : https://github.com/metalefty/X11RDP-RH-Matic
Regards!
I’ve used X11rdp-o-Matic for quite a while with Guacamole to enable HTML5 remote desktops to Ubuntu systems.
This msg is about a couple of issues I’ve run across lately on Ubuntu 15.10 (which now uses systemd).
The scaryglider installation of xrdp creates/installs an init script but it seems that it doesn’t work right with systemd (at least on ubuntu but I’ve seen
similar msgs from other distro users that seem to be the same sympton).
I can’t vouch for all that was documented on this blog: http://c-nergy.be/blog/?p=7986
but I do know that deleting the /lib/systemd/system/xrdp* files to force use of upstart for xrdp seems to work whereas leaving those systemd init scripts
fails to start xrdp up properly.
Second question is about the scaryglider’s sesman configuration during the execution of the script it asks for sesman-rdp but the menu provides other rdp related options such as “rdp any” “rdp tls” etc.
However, when conifguring Guacamole after installation via the guacaomle gui (I’m using mysql for authentication in guacamole)….
Guacamole’s options for RDP are:
rdp
rdp-any
tls
nla
I’ve tried all 4 of those for my test user and I seem to keep having trouble connecting with RDP using firefox on a different Ubuntu machine to connect to the xrdp/x11rdp guacd (guacamole daemon) running on another Ubuntu machine.
My question is
What is the difference between the different scarygilder sesman menu offers for RDP and those for guacamole (which ones should work together) ?
thanks for any guidance.
Brian
You’re not running scarygliders anything – as I keep trying to explain – it’s a script which does all the manual work for you, automatically, that you’d have to do if you wanted a version of X11rdp and xrdp which is more up to date than what the distributions provide (they don’t even provide the X11rdp backend anyway).
So really, when you run the o-Matic script, you’re basically installing everything from source code written by the X11rdp/Xrdp authors.
This is why questions like yours are not being answered by me. I especially know absolutely nothing about Guacamole. I’ve never used it.
I can only suggest that you ask whoever makes Guacamole and also ask the xrdp authors – maybe raise an Issue at their Github repository at https://github.com/neutrinolabs/xrdp/issues
I cannot answer your question, and I don’t think anyone else perusing this site will be able to either.
Regards
Kevin… first my question stated I actually said “The scaryglider installation of xrdp creates/install”. I know I’m not running scaryglider anything other than as an install script.
Second, I just donated to your project last weekend to at least say thanks for your work.
My question was simply about when RDPsesconfig.sh is run to set the user session/DE & whatever else it does would the RDP mode be which of these:
rdp
rdp-any
tls
nla
or does it configure all of them to work?
Hello,
RDPsesconfig just configures a .xsession file in a user’s home directory, which is looked at when an RDP session is initiated. I haven’t tested any session mode other than sesman-X11rdp, therefore I am not certain if the .xsession file is called in any of the other modes. I suppose the way to find out if this is the case, would be to try those other session types and see.
Best regards,
Kevin.
Howto: use X11RDP-O-Matic script on Debian 8.2 (x64) with systemd (yuck) SOLVED (partially)
First, thank you so very much for writing the X11RDP-O-Matic script. With the post-script troubleshooting I’ve done, it works wonderfully.
Second, I know I’m not “running X11RDP-O-Matic”, and that it is a script that produces xrdp and everything necessary to run it. X11RDP-O-Matic’s configuration files for xrdp and xrdp-sesman, however, don’t seem to work correctly on the latest Debian 8.2 (x64), which uses systemd (yuck).
The script ran fine, but the resulting xrdp errored out on me because it’s dependency, xrdp-sesman “could not read the configuration file”. I googled the error message and found that it was due to Debian switching to (yuck) systemd (washing my mouth out with soap).
I started off with this article, which describes the problem, but, due to Debian/Ubutu difference (I assume) it wasn’t working due to the xrdp executable being located in /usr/local/sbin/ in Ubuntu with the install script they are using: http://c-nergy.be/blog/?p=8316
This article on c-nrgy.be mentions a “short-cut” for getting it to run by removing xrdp.service and xrdp.sesman.service from /lib/systemd/system/, but that just makes Debian not use systemd to run it, and it an incomplete solution.
I figured out how to make it work correctly.
It seems that xrdp-sesman, when compiled by your script, is looking for a .pid file in the /run/var/xrdp directory, but that directory does not exist, and all the configuration files have $PIDFile as /run/var
I created a /run/var/xrdp directory and changed all references to any .pid files from /run/var to /run/var/xrdp in the following files:
/etc/init.d/xrdp
/etc/xrdp/xrdp.sh
/lib/systemd/system/xrdp.service
/lib/systemd/system/xrdp.sesman.service
…and it is working beautifully now, EXCEPT: it won’t start automatically. I have to start xrdp with “service xrdp start”. There is more work to do in the init file that I won’t have time to figure out.
I hope this helps you with your awesome script (and I hope you get this email).
Warmest regards,
John E. Mayorga
Hello,i have used X11RDP-o-Matic but how to know default ports/usernames/pass to connect via UltraVNC Viewer ?
http://i.imgur.com/wIY59NN.png
Everytime i get this after setting the location of the logs / db files
I have run the program as admin and with out both get same result.
*SIGH*
Hello Kevin,
lately Debian installed with it`s packet updates an updated version of xrdp and after this my RDP on Debian 8 is not working any longer.
I think a lot more people will have this problem when they will do dist-upgrade.
Will there be a solution for this?
Hi. I haven’t worked on X11rdp-o-Matic for a long time now. It is being maintained by someone else. I have updated the FAQ to point to where you can get help on issues pertaining to X11rdp-o-Matic and also XRDP – refer to the section “-1” I have inserted to the top of the FAQ.
Best regards