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At my university, I have a Xubuntu workstation, on which all my simulations and other scientific applications/calcs are run. When I am physically present in the office, I use the i3 window manager, which suits my keyboard-centric workflow.

When I need to connect my SP3 to my office workstation, there are occasions on which I need X-window support. I don't have admin access on staff machine, so installing nomachineNX/FreeNX/other NX variants is out. Even if I get ICT to do it on one machine, I can't connect from say, a library machine running win7.

I have tried the solution posted here Can I access Ubuntu from Windows remotely? . Although it worked for a few weeks when my workstation updated to a newer kernel and in another update xrdp also got updated, something broke, and systemd would not let xrdp service start. I then read online about the incompatibilities of systemd and xrdp. It also seems that there is a related project x11rdp-o-matic, which provides an automated configuration for directed sound/monitor config etc. But it looks like the maintainer of that project also abandoned this due to frustration with above-mentioned systemd issues.

I'd ideally like to connect to an i3 session if possible (or at-least have a reliable workaround for the xfce connection issues described above)

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Dr Krishnakumar Gopalakrishnan
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  • I have to admit that I lost iterest in your problem when you decided we needed to know why you are using a Microsoft Surface Pro and relegated this question to the "Too Long, didn't Read" Bin. We like to focus on the problems and solutions here as this is a Q & A site, not a blog. That being said, I assume this will be helpful based on what little I was able to read: http://askubuntu.com/questions/592537/can-i-access-ubuntu-from-windows-remotely – Elder Geek Feb 10 '17 at 18:07
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    Possible duplicate of Can I access Ubuntu from Windows remotely? – Elder Geek Feb 10 '17 at 18:07
  • Thanks and sorry about it. In my previous posts to stack exchange, wherein I tried to tersely express the problem, I have experienced acerbity from the community here, criticizing that they couldn't understand why I need the solution that I was asking for., hinting that my needs were not genuine. – Dr Krishnakumar Gopalakrishnan Feb 10 '17 at 18:30
  • Secondly, it doesn't answer my problem fully. The solution highlighted in that stackexchange question does not work reliably with latest versions of xrdp and systemd. Furthermore, my primary question was to connect to an i3 session, and to an xfce session only as a compromise. – Dr Krishnakumar Gopalakrishnan Feb 10 '17 at 18:32
  • I don't question your needs are genuine. It's doubtful anyone would take the time to write so much for nothing. It's true that short, poorly formed questions are frowned upon and we do need enough information to provide clues to solve the problem. It's definitely a balancing act and often difficult to determine what information is useful and what isn't. A quick pointer would be if it's not about the problem or what you've tried to fix it we probably don't need to see it. – Elder Geek Feb 10 '17 at 18:35
  • What error did you get when "systemd would not let xrdp service start"? – Elder Geek Feb 10 '17 at 18:43
  • The first symptom was that I could not connect remotely after update to systemd 232.x, xrdp 0.9.1, kernel 4.9.x. I have since purged xrdp, but here is what I remember. "Failed to start xrdp service/daemon. see systemctl -xe for more information". systemctl -xe produced logs with series of similar messages.I also had difficulty purging xrdp. apt/dpkg kept complaining that I held broken packages. Furthermore, dpkg --configure -a, and apt-install -f both didn't help. I had to do the dangerous rm -rf on any files with xrdp on the root of the filesystem and reboot to get rid of the package. – Dr Krishnakumar Gopalakrishnan Feb 10 '17 at 18:50

1 Answers1

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the content of the xrdp.service and xrdp-sesman.service files that control xrdp sessions does not seems to reflect the correct information about path locations for executable files and Environment. To solve the issue, we delete the xrdp.service and xrdp-sesman.service files from the /lib/systemd/system folder.

Reboot Ubuntu and check to insure that the xrdp service is running properly with the command sudo systemctl status xrdp and confirm that the service is marked as active.

This answer is in response to the question asked and is in no way intended to answer unrelated questions regarding broken packages.

Source:

http://c-nergy.be/blog/?p=8316

Elder Geek
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  • Thank you. I shall try it out and report back. Meanwhile, is it acceptable to replace the 'xfce4-session' in echo xfce4-session >~/.xsession with 'i3-session'. Is 'i3-session' a valid keyword ? – Dr Krishnakumar Gopalakrishnan Feb 10 '17 at 18:59
  • I'm sorry, I don't have the answer to that question – Elder Geek Feb 10 '17 at 19:35
  • Thanks for your replies. Tried the method in http://askubuntu.com/questions/592537 , but it is really strange/finicky. I could not login from a windows machine on the same wired network. But I managed to login to an xfce session from another windows machine. But here is the strangest part. After logging off that machine, when I tried to log back onto my own physical machine (in person), I was locked out of the GUI session ! Strangely, the guest xsession account was working. I could log on to tty1, and set up another admin account from the command line there. Now, I need to get back access ! – Dr Krishnakumar Gopalakrishnan Feb 10 '17 at 20:26
  • If you have another question, please ask it by clicking the Ask Question button. – Elder Geek Feb 10 '17 at 20:29
  • Thank you. Have done so. http://askubuntu.com/questions/882066/locked-out-of-xubuntu-machine-after-an-xrdp-session-from-windows – Dr Krishnakumar Gopalakrishnan Feb 10 '17 at 20:36
  • As you are a new user I recommend that you review http://askubuntu.com/help/whats-reputation and ask that you accept answers to your questions that help you and upvote answers to others questions that help you. This helps others with similar problems locate answers that are useful. Thank you for your participation. – Elder Geek Feb 10 '17 at 20:52