Thursday, January 16, 2014

Problem connecting Xrdp

If the error appeared as "problem connecting" when connecting to remote desktop using xrdp, it is most likely the remote Linux does not have VNC server installed.

(1) To verify this, you can type:
sudo tail /var/log/xrdp-sesman.log

(2) If you see the error message below, then it means you don't have VNC server installed.
[ERROR] another Xserver is already active on display xx 

(3) To fix this, simply run this command:
sudo apt-get install tightvncserver

(4) After that, restart xrdp service by running:
sudo service xrdp restart

Here's why:
xrdp is the daemon that handles RDP remote desktop access from Windows machines to your Linux Mint PC. But it's not enough to install only xrdp - you need a VNC server. Unfortunately it's not automatically installed with the xrdp package.

The error message "error - problem connecting" after a successful login message isn't very helpful either. Searching the Internet can drive you in circles - I wasted at least 2 hours on finding out that I forgot to install the VNC server - ouch.

Thanks powerhouse from Linux Mint forum who shared this useful information.