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olaolaee

Member

Registered: 2024-05-10

Posts: 4

[SOLVED] Access GNOME session via RDP

The question:

tl;dr looking for workflow steps to have an XRDP server running on GNOME - below the whys

Hi, new user here. I have a fresh and working Arch installation from scratch on bare metal, with GNOME (all packages updated) and Wayland disabled through GDM.

I'd like to access and control the whole GNOME graphical session by another machine, from an RDP client provided builtin within Windows 11 (from the same client I already successfully manage several other Windows machines).

SSH access to my Arch GNOME is already up and running, but I also need graphical access to the whole session for a bunch of reasons (e.g. sharing clipboard from Windows to Arch, maybe have Firefox and GIMP (both on Arch) interact between them and recording their interaction directly from Windows, and so on). I'd choose RDP since it's well known, but I'm open to suggestions.

I'm asking for help and advices because I've found several guides on the web, citing several packages and configuration files that seem to me to be sometimes in contrast between each other.

I suppose other people may have already encountered the same problem, so I'm looking for clean steps... maybe still other packages to install, maybe from AUR, maybe not, maybe still other conf files to rice... but in a consistent way.

As of now I have no relevant data on this system, so just in case I can destroy and recreate it again, if necessary.

I have this machine at work (no remote connection from the external of the LAN), so I might need some days to make the proper changes and repost here my system's output, if required.

Here I can read that GNOME already comes with a native RDP service, but, unless better advice, I'd rather use XRDP for at least three reasons:

(1) maybe in the future I'll try other DEs/WMs, and I'm looking for a consistent solution (if possible); also, it looks like the native GNOME way requires the user to be logged in in advance (that could be a problem). Also, from here it looks like automatic login must also be enabled and automatic screen lock disabled. No good.

(2) on a default GNOME install, the inner RDP feature is unavailable (at least to me):

Maybe the additional package gnome-remote-desktop could help, but since I'm already uncertain, I'd wait for a feedback, before.

(3) I recall a CentOS installation with a friend some years ago, always with GNOME, and with the xrdp package. If I'm not mistaken, it worked directly out-of-the-box, so I already know it's possible to have XRDP working with GNOME, despite additional configurations required by Arch.

Extra:

A final note on the Xrdp page on the wiki: in my opinion it's not fully written in a clear way and, as of now, it doesn't help to achieve what needed (more doubts than answers).

I mean, about the Arch installation process from scratch: if you read its page (a good example) step to step, and your hardware is properly working, you can have a system up and running within an hour, if it's your first time (only downside to me: you must search for details about the bootloader, /etc/hosts and NTP on other pages).

Another good example: I never used systemd-boot before, but some days ago I read its page for the first time, and so I was able to install it correctly at the first take. No errors.

On the web you can still found lot of resources saying Wayland is still not fully functional (at least for now). I take it for granted. About the Xrdp page, I'd like to know wether it's simpler/better/more tested to use Xvnc or xorgxrdp as a backend (it looks like the latter to me, but maybe I'm wrong).

If so, do I have to install xorgxrdp alone, or xorgxrdp with xrdp (or xrdp-git with xorgxrdp-git)? Do they conflict between themselves? xorg-xrdb is mandatory or just in the black box case? Better PulseAudio or PipeWire (both cited in the page, but here we can read that applications need specific support for screen sharing via PipeWire, so X applications (e.g. Skype) will never work unless you switch back to X)?

Some snippets for (e.g.) sesman.ini, startwm.sh and/or xrdp.ini (if necessary)?

To properly access the graphical system from a RDP session, do I have to locally access the GNOME session locally before or not? And, if I'm already locally logged, will I be (locally) logged off (one session at the time, like in Windows)?

I think all the answers to those questions (with examples) should be added directly to the Xrdp page itself. With short workflow examples for GNOME, Plasma, XFCE, and at least on one of the modern tiling WMs. That would be a benefit for the whole community.

I fear the same nonclear approach can be (at least) partially found in the TigerVNC page also.

Many thanks for any suggestions.

Last edited by olaolaee (2024-05-26 11:51:21)

gerdesj

Member

Registered: 2016-04-17

Posts: 16

Re: [SOLVED] Access GNOME session via RDP

I can't directly answer your questions but you might try FreeRDP.  It has freerdp-shadow-cli.  That's one package and a one line command to run.  It would require a running session on the host, rather than handling login and running the session itself.

[EDIT] man loginctl, read up the section on "enable-linger".  Instead of using a Display Manager, you could autorun startx for the lingering user.  Worth a quick look.

Last edited by gerdesj (2024-05-12 23:53:16)

olaolaee

Member

Registered: 2024-05-10

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] Access GNOME session via RDP

Hi gerdesj, and many thanks for your effort.

I didn't know the software you mentioned; I'll give it a try in the future.

As of now, I saw this Reddit post with another solution (NoMachine) that I'm testing in these days (it looks like it's working out of the box):

By far the best Linux experience is nomachine ... The basic version is log on to the existing desktop session (works also if user is logged out because then it logs in).

The response and performance is out of sight compared to vnc ... If nomachine doesn't work for you, nothing will, including RDP on Windows.

Honestly, I hoped for more suggestions and configs from the community about XRDP, given its age and past diffusion... didn't think it was so unpopular (or maybe the problem it its GNOME combo?).

Nevertheless, I believe it's better to mark this thread as solved... I'll give another try myself with XRDP on GNOME on summer, when I'll find the time, looking for advices with maybe more detailed errors on console output.

Thanks anyway.