By userdo
I tried setting up a digitalocean droplet ubuntu with remote desktop
using these commands
sudo adduser bob
sudo apt update (was quick)
sudo apt install -y xubuntu-desktop (takes about 7min)
sudo apt install -y xrdp (within 30sec )
Then in Windows I open up mstsc.exe and enter the IP, and I get a Ubuntu login GUI come up. If I enter the correct user/pass then it exits!
That’s with Ubuntu24
If I do it on Ubuntu22 then a screen says “oops”.
This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.
You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!
Heya,
There are two possibilities
-
On Ubuntu 24.04 or 22.04, XRDP doesn’t play nicely out of the box with GNOME or even Xfce unless properly configured.
-
You get disconnected after login because XRDP tries to launch a session that crashes or closes immediately.
Set Xfce as the default session for XRDP. For the bob user, create (or modify) the file:
echo "startxfce4" > /home/bob/.xsession
chmod +x /home/bob/.xsession
chown bob:bob /home/bob/.xsession
Allow the bob user to use XRDP’s session. Sometimes you need to add them to the ssl-cert group:
sudo adduser xrdp ssl-cert
sudo systemctl restart xrdp
Also, allow the XRDP port, by default it’s 3389 in your firewall, please.
You can try and changing the port to something else as I’ve seen people having issues in the past with this.
Heya @userdo
If xubuntu-desktop is causing issues, try using lxqt or mate, which are lighter and often more compatible with XRDP:
sudo apt install ubuntu-mate-core ubuntu-mate-desktop
Then set the session:
echo "mate-session" > /home/bob/.xsession
chown bob:bob /home/bob/.xsession
chmod +x /home/bob/.xsession
sudo apt install lxqt
echo "lxqt-session" > /home/bob/.xsession
Then restart xrdp:
sudo systemctl restart xrdp
Hope that this helps!
Become a contributor for community
Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.
DigitalOcean Documentation
Full documentation for every DigitalOcean product.
Resources for startups and SMBs
The Wave has everything you need to know about building a business, from raising funding to marketing your product.
The developer cloud
Scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.
Get started for free
Sign up and get $200 in credit for your first 60 days with DigitalOcean.*
*This promotional offer applies to new accounts only.