Hello World, 

In our previous post, we have described the common approach to have xRDP working with Ubuntu systems. The common approach consist of installing an alternate Desktop and use this desktop environment during the remote session connection.  In another post, we have been able to demonstrate that it was possible to perform a remote connection against the Unity Desktop directly with no need to install any additional desktop environment. 

In this post, we will see if the same approach would be possible.  We will see if can perform a remote session against the Unity Desktop.  

Note : 

This approach is still somehow experimental and small issues might still popping up.  so keep that in mind and perform this installation in a test environment. Use this procedure at your own risk…. 

xRDP Remote session against Unity Desktop

Assumptions

When we have performed our installation & testing, we have been using the following infrastructure

• We have performed a Fresh installation of the Ubuntu 16.10 Released
• We have performed the installation on a Virtual Machine running on Hyper-V Server and Virtualbox

We are assuming that

• Your Ubuntu machine is connected to Internet (so you can download the necessary packages for the installation to occur). If you are not connected to internet, you can still manually download the necessary packages and copy them to your Ubuntu machine
• You have your Ubuntu machine installed,configured and have the latest patches installed…
• Your Ubuntu computer is running 16.10

Installation Process 

Step 1 – Install XRDP Package from Ubuntu Repository

A standard installation for us means that we will be using the xrdp package available within the Ubuntu repository. To install the xrdp software from Ubuntu repository, you will need to issue the following command in a terminal.

sudo apt-get install xrdp -y 

Because of the sudo command, you will be prompted for a password. After entering your password, your xrdp installation will start. Wait for completion 

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The version of xrdp package in Ubuntu 16.10 is 0.9.0. By default, you do not need to install any vnc server anymore as the xrdp package will use the xorg rdp new driver to accept the connections.

Step 2 – Configure the xRDP keyboard Layout

By default, xrdp remote session would be using the English layout keyboard. To try to set the proper keyboard layout within your remote session, you can execute the following commands. This step might not be necessary in the future. It seems that xRDP tries to use your current keyboard. 

# Set keyboard layout in xrdp sessions 
cd /etc/xrdp 
test=$(setxkbmap -query | awk -F":" '/layout/ {print $2}') 
echo "your current keyboard layout is.." $test
setxkbmap -layout $test 
sudo cp /etc/xrdp/km-0409.ini /etc/xrdp/km-0409.ini.bak 
sudo xrdp-genkeymap km-0409.ini

Note : 

In the past, the xRDP login box was also using by default the En-Us keyboard layout. This seems to be changed and the proper keyboard layout is detected now. 

Step 3 – Reconnect to the Same Session

No additional actions are required anymore in order to be able to reconnect to the same session. 

 

Test your Remote Desktop Connection 

Important Note : 

Before trying to remote desktop into your ubuntu machine, you have to ensure that the user account you are using is not logged in the system. The user that you want to use to make the remote connection must not be logged on the system.

At this stage, you should be ready to test your connection.  Get the ip address or the hostname of your ubuntu machine and fire up your mstsc.exe client on a windows machine. 

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In the xRDP Login page, provide your credentials and accept the default settings presented to your for the session choice.  You should see the option sesman-xorg-xrdp

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 You will need to be patient.  When your connection, you will see a gray screen, then a black screen like the one below…

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When you see a cross cursor, this means that your session has been established but you still do not have the unity desktop started.   Right-click on your desktop and select open Terminal option

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In the Terminal that opens, type the command

unity  

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After some screen flickering, you will see your Unity Desktop presented to you. However, you might get prompted with an authenticate popup. At the moment, click cancel on it (we will provide the fix later on) 

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At this stage, your terminal box is still open and you cannot move it anywhere.  Type exit and the Terminal will close.

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At this stage, you can start working with your Unity Desktop through the Remote Session. Out-of -the-box, you should be able to use Drive Redirection and Clipboard function within your remote session as you can see in the following screenshots below

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Detected Issues (so far…)

First Login Experience

The first time you will login into your remote session you will need to manually call the unity Desktop. At this stage, we didn’t find any workarounds.  Each time you logout from your Remote session, the next time you login into it, you will see the black screen.  You will need to open your Terminal and issue the unity Command. 

If you have disconnected your session, you will be able to reconnect and have direct access to your Unity Desktop

Logged Users locally and remotely

This sounds like a major issue.  The user that will perform the remote session cannot be logged on on the physical machine.  If this is the case, when you trying to perform the remote desktop operation, your session will be disconnected after a few seconds.  If a user is logged on via remote desktop to the system, the user will also not be able to log into the local system. You will loop into the login screen.  

Again, at the moment, we didn’t look into this issue.  To be safe, I would recommend to create an additional user  on the system that can be used to terminate sessions in case you need to access your system in a way or another

System Settings Not working in Remote Session 

We have not tested all the applications and settings within the remote session.  However, be aware that some stuff might not work. we cannot change desktop background while connected remotely.  Moreover, it seems that the system settings application is simply not available when remotely connected through xrdp 

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As more and more people try to use this approach, we might find out more issues and solutions…

Performance 

I might have a slow machine in my test lab but the performance are not that great. It take some time to open apps or to simply refresh the screen.  The behavior is kind of sluggish… Again, this could be due to the virtual machine we are using which has really low specifications… 

Authentication required to create color managed device error

When you login into your system via remote session, you will see this message popping up.  You can simply cancel and you will be able to proceed till the next time you login and start a new session.

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To avoid this prompt, we will need to change the polkit configuration. Using admin privileges, create a file called 02-allow-colord.conf under the following directory /etc/polkit-1/localauthority.conf.d/

The file should contains the following instructions and you should not be prompted anymore with such authentication request while remoting into your system 

polkit.addRule(function(action, subject) {
if ((action.id == “org.freedesktop.color-manager.create-device” ||
action.id == “org.freedesktop.color-manager.create-profile” ||
action.id == “org.freedesktop.color-manager.delete-device” ||
action.id == “org.freedesktop.color-manager.delete-profile” ||
action.id == “org.freedesktop.color-manager.modify-device” ||
action.id == “org.freedesktop.color-manager.modify-profile”) &&
subject.isInGroup(“{group}”)) {
return polkit.Result.YES;
}
});

 

Working Stuff 

Indicator Panels & logout

In our previous post about Unity and Remote Desktop, the unity indicator panel were not working really well.  Implementing some workarounds, it was possible to display the indicator panel but the logout functionality was not working at all.  Using the approach described above, the indicator panel is showing and you can basically perform a standard logout action… This is working out of the box. 

Final Notes 

This is it for this post. In this post,we have demonstrated that even if it’s not straight forward and the user experience might be a little bit different, it’s possible to have a remote session directly to the Unity Desktop interface.  Most of the features are working. 

The only annoying part is that you cannot have users logged in on the system directly or via remote session in order to gain access to the system.  It’s like xRDP is not creating a new session but tries to takeover the existing one which then break something in the process.

Hope you find this post useful 

Till next time 

See ya