Hello World,

Here we go again !

Important Note :  

If you are running Ubuntu 13.10, please review this link to install xrdp and have it working.

In this post, we will explain how to install xrdp software on your ubuntu 13.04.  If you follow us, you know that you can use the xrdp pacakge in order to perform remote desktop connection from a windows box using the default remote desktop client available within Windows Operating System.  Be aware that xRDP software solution does not support Unity Desktop interface. You will be able to connect to your ubuntu computer but you will need to configure a “working” desktop interface.

We have described the process for previous versions.  You can find the posts describing the process hereafter :

• Ubuntu 12.10 – How to remote desktop to Ubuntu 12.10
• Ubuntu 12.04 – How to remote desktop to Ubuntu 12.04

You will see that the process has not changed dramatically. So, Let’s go !

 

Installing XRDP packages 

Usually, you would use the Ubuntu Software Center to locate and install the XRDP Package.  In Ubuntu 13.04 (the version I’m currently using), the package does not seems to be present yet. The package might be included later through updates.

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In the mean time, we will perform the installation using the command line.   To install the xrdp package, you will type the following command in the Terminal

sudo apt-get install xrdp 

You will be prompted to confirm the installation.  Press Y.

 

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Wait for the process to complete.

 

At this stage, you should be able to perform a remote desktop connection to your Ubuntu 13.04 machine.  However, you will see only an empty desktop with no icons and no menu.  This is an expected behavior since Unity Desktop interface is not supported and since you didn’t configure any alternate desktop interface.

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Install & Configure Gnome-fallback desktop

 

In order to have a usable desktop interface, we will need to install an alternate desktop.  In our scenario, we will install the gnome-fallback desktop interface.  To perform the installation, we will simply use the Ubuntu Software Center.  In the search box, we ‘ve typed gnome-session.  In the result page, you will see the gnome Session manager – Gnome fallback session. 

Click on the install button and wait for the process to complete

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At this stage, you will need to create an additional configuration file by issuing the following command from the terminal

echo "gnome-session --session=gnome-fallback" > ~/.xsession

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If you try now to perform a remote desktop from windows, you should be prompted for credentials.

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If the credentials are valid, you will be then able to access the gnome-session-fallback desktop and start working.  Note that the gear button is not working in this remote desktop session.

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Keyboard Layout

If you are using a different keyboard layout than US, you will need to perform an additional configuration in order to have to correct keyboard layout mapped in your remote desktop session. You will need to run the following command from a terminal session

Step 1 : You go to the /etc/xrdp directory (cd /etc/xrdp)

Step 2 : you issue the command setxkbmap -layout <%your layout%>  to define which keyboard map/layout to use (in my case, setxkbmap be for belgium layout)

Step 3 : create a copy of the km-4090.ini file into the same directory.  It seems that this is the default file used by xrdp to define the keyboard layout. You will need to use sudo in order to be able to write into the directory

Step 4 :  Check that you have a backup of your file by typing the dir or ls command

Step 5 : update the file  by issuing the following command sudo xrdp-genkeymap km-080c.ini (where km-080c.ini is the file needed for Belgian keyboard)

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After that, you should restart the xrdp service by issuing the following command

sudo service xrdp restart 

At this stage, you will have a working keyboard within your xrdp remote session.  You will have access to the main keys.  However, you might notice that “special” keys like arrows, Euro symbol,@,… are not working as expected.  If you are lucky, you can use existing km-xxxx.ini file that would fix this issue (see http://c-nergy.be/blog/?p=3858). If you are not lucky, you will need to generate your own file and fix your issues.  Again, you can have a look at http://c-nergy.be/blog/?p=3858 which will explain how you could try to fix this issue.  The manual process can be time consuming.

Final Notes

That’s it for this post !  This is a wrap up of previous posts we already published related to xrdp.  Using this approach, user will be able to connect to Ubuntu machines using the standard remote desktop.  The only remaining issue with these instructions and this setup is that if a user disconnect from remote desktop session and tries to reconnect, a new session will be created.  You will not reconnected to the existing session.  In the next post, we will show you how to overcome this limitation.

Till Next Time

See ya