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Preserving for the future: Shell scripts, AoC, and more

Xfce on Xrdp on Fedora 26

bgstack15

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Introduction

This post will demonstrate how to set up a Fedora installation to act as a terminal server that serves desktops over RDP. This will allow Windows computers to connect to it, as well as a GNU/Linux system running xfreerdp clients. These instructions should be easy to follow on any RHEL-based distros, and easily adapted to others. The copy-paste segments have been tested on Fedora 26 but the accompanying instructions should guide you in deploying a terminal server on a broad range of GNU/Linux environments.

How to set up xrdp on Fedora

Ensure your desktop environment is installed. For CentOS 7 that would be something similar to yum groupinstall "Server with gui" or yum groupinstall xfce. Install the components necessary for rdp and vnc. When the rdp server allows a user to connect, the user connects to a X windows session in VNC.

yum -y install xrdp tigervnc-server

Set up a firewall rule for the RDP port.

tf=/lib/firewalld/services/xrdp.xml; touch "${tf}"; chmod 0644 "${tf}"
cat <<EOF >"${tf}"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<service>
  <short>Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)</short>
  <description>A RDP service that serves X desktop sessions. Using this allows a Windows client to connect using the built-in mstsc utility!</description>
  <port protocol="tcp" port="3389"/>
</service>
EOF
firewall-cmd --reload
firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=xrdp
firewall-cmd --reload

Running xfce or any arbitrary DE

On Fedora, for xfce specifically you need to make sure that X clients are told to run xfce. The vnc services will try to start a window manager, but as of the time of this writing xfce is not included in the list, so it will fail out (or run gnome, if it's present). The file to inspect is /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients, or the per-user settings at ~/.Xclients. For the etc file, it should be fairly obvious how to add to it. Additionally, make sure the file is executable! For Fedora 26 and xfce, you can inspect this patch file, and then either run the patch statement or make the changes yourself manually.

# for all users
tf=/etc/X11/xinit/Xclients.patch; touch "${tf}"; chmod 0644 "${tf}";
cat <<'EOFPATCH' >"${tf}"
--- /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients 2017-02-12 00:38:18.000000000 -0500
+++ /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients.new 2017-10-14 08:12:34.340524791 -0400
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@
 MSESSION="$(type -p mate-session)"
 STARTKDE="$(type -p startkde)"
 STARTLXDE="$(type -p startlxde)"
+STARTXFCE="$(type -p startxfce4)"

 # check to see if the user has a preferred desktop
 PREFERRED=
@@ -25,6 +26,8 @@
    PREFERRED="$STARTKDE"
     elif [ "$DESKTOP" = "LXDE" ]; then
    PREFERRED="$STARTLXDE"
+    elif [ "$DESKTOP" = "XFCE" ]; then
+   PREFERRED="$STARTXFCE"
     fi
 fi

@@ -44,6 +47,9 @@
 elif [ -n "$STARTLXDE" ]; then
     # if neither GNOME nor KDE then LXDE
     exec "$STARTLXDE"
+elif [ -n "$STARTXFCE" ]; then
+    # if none of the above, try XFCE.
+    exec "$STARTXFCE"
 fi

 # We should also support /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients.d scripts
EOFPATCH
patch -p1 /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients < /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients.patch

And for the individual users (I have yet to test to see if the normal order of resolution of the X files lets this actually override it for the user):

tf=~/.Xclients; touch "${tf}"; chmod 0700 "${tf}";
cat <<EOF > "${tf}"
exec /usr/bin/startxfce4
EOF

And that's it! A sample xfreerdp statement to connect to this service could be:

xfreerdp /sec-rdp /cert-tofu /size:1520x820 /bpp:16 /v:192.168.1.76 -z /disp /audio-mode:0 /wallpaper /themes /u:bgstack15

[![Screenshot of session manager login screen in vnc in

xrdp](/2017/10/freerdp-sesman.png)](/2017/10/freerdp-sesman.png) Login screen after connecting to xrdp service

References

Weblinks

  1. Using the patch utility https://docs.moodle.org/dev/How_to_create_a_patch#Creating_a_patch_using_diff
  2. update file /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients https://docs-old.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/13/html/Deployment_Guide/s1-x-runlevels.html
  3. https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=8261
  4. General xrdp guide https://hostpresto.com/community/tutorials/using-a-desktop-environment-on-a-centos-7-vps/
  5. Notes about cinnamon on CentOS 7 https://www.techbrown.com/install-cinnamon-2-6-on-fedora-22-centos-7-rhel-7.shtml
  6. xrdp on centos 7 http://idroot.net/tutorials/how-to-install-xrdp-on-centos-7/
  7. http://www.itzgeek.com/how-tos/linux/centos-how-tos/install-xrdp-on-centos-7-rhel-7.html

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