Xrdp

xrdp is a daemon that supports Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). It uses Xvnc, X11rdp or xorgxrdp as a backend.

Installation

Install the xrdp^AUR package (or alternatively xrdp-git^AUR for the development version).

Autoboot at startup

The xrdp^AUR package contains service files for systemd. Enable xrdp.service and xrdp-sesman.service.

Running as Terminal Server (Xorg)

Install the xorgxrdp-git^AUR package.

Add allowed_users=anybody to /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config to allow anybody to start X

Edit ~/.xinitrc or /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc to launch your DE.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter black box around mouse pointer create ~/.Xresources-xrdp with line Xcursor.core:1 and load it in ~/.xinitrc like

xrdb ~/.Xresources-xrdp
exec startlxde

You may need to install xorg-xrdb.

Running with Vino (Gnome VNC-Server for root session)

Enable the server to be seen via vino-preferences. Since vino defaults to port 5900 for connections, we will edit the xrdp configuration file to understand this. Append the vino session to xrdp's configuration file:

/etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini

[xrdp8]
name=Vino-Session
lib=libvnc.so
username=ask
password=ask
ip=127.0.0.1
port=5900

If you encounter VNC connection errors, it may be because vino-server defaults to accepting only TLS connections. This must be changed to standard VNC authentication so that xrdp may connect:

gsettings set org.gnome.Vino require-encryption false

You can also restrict vino-server to only listen on the loopback interface:

gsettings set org.gnome.Vino network-interface lo

Remember to restart the xrdp server, and one should be able to connect to the vino session (tested using xfreerdp).

Usage

After starting the xrdp and xrdp-sesman services, you should be able to connect an RDP client to the host on the default RDP port (3389). If successful, you will be greeted with the xrdp session manager window which allows you to choose between Xorg or Xvnc sessions and provides inputs for user authentication. The session manager UI can be highly customized by modifying /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini.

The parameters used to start Xorg and Xvnc display servers can be configured in /etc/xrdp/sesman.ini.

After successfully starting a display server, xrdp will execute /etc/xrdp/startwm.sh by default. This script is meant to start a window manager (similar to .xinitrc) and will typically require modification to start your desired window manager. Note: the default script will attempt to start xterm which will cause the connection to fail if xterm is not installed.

If you just close the session window and RDP connection, you can access the same session again next time you connect with RDP. When you exit the window manager or desktop environment from the session window, the session will close and a new session will be opened the next time.

xrdp checks only if a session with the same geometry is already opened. It will start a new session if the geometry/resolution doesn't match.

See also

• TigerVNC - VNC, an alternative to RDP, also used as backend here
• freerdp a rdesktop fork that supports RDP 7.1 features including network level authentication (NLA). See also [1].