Gnome Remote Desktop on Ubuntu 26.04

Guestbook

Latest Ubuntu 26.04 LTS has dropped the support of X11 Server and xRDP and moved to the adoption of Wayland Display Server. Old approach with xRDP doesn’t work anymore. The solution / fix is the new Gnome Remote Desktop.

Gnome Remote Desktop

Generate Remote Desktop Server self-signed certificate:

1
2
3
4
$ sudo openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout /var/lib/gnome-remote-desktop/rdp-tls.key -x509 -days 3650 -out /var/lib/gnome-remote-desktop/rdp-tls.crt -subj "/CN=$(hostname)"

$ sudo chmod 600 /var/lib/gnome-remote-desktop/rdp-tls.key
$ sudo chmod 644 /var/lib/gnome-remote-desktop/rdp-tls.crt

Register self-signed certificate with the system daemon:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
$ sudo grdctl --system rdp set-tls-key /var/lib/gnome-remote-desktop/rdp-tls.key
$ sudo grdctl --system rdp set-tls-cert /var/lib/gnome-remote-desktop/rdp-tls.crt

$ sudo grdctl --system rdp set-credentials $(whoami) rdp-user-password

$ sudo grdctl --system rdp enable
$ sudo systemctl restart gnome-remote-desktop.service

Show Remote Desktop Server status:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
$ sudo grdctl --system status --show-credentials
Overall:
        Unit status: active
RDP:
        Status: enabled
        Port: 3389
        Authentication methods: credentials
        TLS certificate: /var/lib/gnome-remote-desktop/rdp-tls.crt
        TLS fingerprint: 71:f1:20:64:fe:e3:58:97:95:8d
        TLS key: /var/lib/gnome-remote-desktop/rdp-tls.key
        Kerberos keytab: (null)
        Username: terrence
        Password: rdp-user-password

When connect from Windows App (Microsoft Remote Desktop), error thrown in log:

1
2
3
4
5
$ sudo journalctl -u gnome-remote-desktop.service -f
...
Jun 02 12:40:22 NucBox gnome-remote-desktop-daemon[58071]: [RDP] Sending server redirection
Jun 02 12:40:22 NucBox gnome-remote-desktop-daemon[58071]: [12:40:22:884] [58071:0004752e] [ERROR][com.freerdp.core.peer] - [rdp_set_error_info]: ERRINFO_LOGOFF_BY_USER [0x0001000C]
Jun 02 12:40:22 NucBox gnome-remote-desktop-daemon[58071]: [RDP] Network or intentional disconnect, stopping session

NOTE: According to A.I., GNOME Remote Desktop –system mode uses Server Redirection — after you authenticate at the system level, it redirects the RDP client to your actual user session on a different internal port. Microsoft Remote Desktop on Mac sometimes rejects this redirection for self-signed certificates because the certificate on the redirected session doesn’t match what it expects. And use user-level approach instead.

However, choose a different Remote Desktop Client like Royal TSX https://royalapps.com/ts/mac/features, works fine.

References

Contents

  1. References