Arch Linux

jons

Member

Registered: 2024-04-15

Posts: 4

Start KDE (wayland) after reboot from SSH session (not autologin)

If I reboot my desktop, I'd like to be able to connect via SSH and start KDE (on the desktop's monitor, as if I had just logged in on the desktop via sddm).  I've got sunshine installed and starting as a user service, so the point of this is to get the user logged in so I can connect to the desktop with sunshine.

I know I can disable sddm and then from a local terminal I can run the Exec entry in the plasma wayland desktop file:

/usr/lib/plasma-dbus-run-session-if-needed /usr/bin/startplasma-wayland

This works from the desktop from one of the terminals but if I try to do the same thing from an SSH session I get:

org.kde.startup: "kdeinit5_shutdown" QList() exited with code 255

I see an error in the plasma-kded6 service complaining that no Qt platform plugin could be initialized.

I've tried a handful of things (setting WAYLAND_DISPLAY, DISPLAY, didn't think those were the right things to do, just trying things)

I'd really rather avoid autologin, I don't anticipate having to do this often but it would be very handy if I could do this when I need to. 

Can anyone point me in the right direction here?  I've started reading up on wayland to figure out the startup process to hopefully figure out where to look, but any assistance / info would be appreciated

Last edited by jons (2025-03-01 23:13:14)

galvez_65

Member

Registered: 2018-06-29

Posts: 31

Re: Start KDE (wayland) after reboot from SSH session (not autologin)

Remote login isn't really supported out of the box with SDDM utilizing wayland. What I did to accomplish the same thing is switch the sddm compositor to a wlroots based one so I could use  wayvnc via ssh tunnel. Specifically I switched from kwin to sway, and added wayvnc to my sway config. Now when my remote computer is showing the sddm dm I can vnc to the computer and login. Once the user is logged in you have to switch to a different remote desktop solution such as sunshine in your case.
Happy to provide more details if it's helpful

qupfer

Member

Registered: 2014-04-02

Posts: 16

Re: Start KDE (wayland) after reboot from SSH session (not autologin)

Hi,
I"m intrested in more details or maybe other ideas/solutions.

I have an arch desktop with sddm+kde/plasma and enabled krdp.
How ether, if I start it remotly (wake on lan), it looks like krdp is not started, as nobody loged in.

But sometimes, I want to use some graphical programs remotely (rdp).
Currently, I login thoruhg ssh, start a weston session with rdp-nbackend and use this for my gui-apps. It's ok for the moment, but I would prefer to have my "normal" kde.

piotr_dobrogost

Member

Registered: 2025-04-06

Posts: 2

Re: Start KDE (wayland) after reboot from SSH session (not autologin)

If I reboot my desktop, I'd like to be able to connect via SSH and start KDE

Looking for the same and getting the same error as you when trying `startplasma-wayland`.
Just asked this question at https://discuss.kde.org/t/how-to-start- … _dobrogost