How do I set up xrdp session that reuses an existing session?

Solution 1:

I had this same problem, and I just found an easy solution. I originally just installed xrdp using the standard proceedure:

apt-get install xrdp

After that, its all about your xrdp.ini file, which is located here:

/etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini

To open and edit the xrdp's configuration file use:

sudo nano /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini

by default the first xrdp session handling script looks like this:

[xrdp1]
name=sesman-vnc
lib=libvnc.so
username=ask
password=ask
ip=127.0.0.1
port=-1

The important line is port=-1, this makes xrdp always look for a free port to connect. If you set a fixed port here, the xrdp will always go back and connect to the same session. I changed mine so it looks like this:

[xrdp1]
name=customsessionname
lib=libvnc.so
username=myusername
password=ask
ip=127.0.0.1
port=5912

Thats it, I think you could get away with just changing the port=-1 to port=5912. My xrdp always re-connects to existing session always using the same port.

Solution 2:

I'd like to improve on an existing answer. The top voted answer was to edit the xrdp.ini file to change port to a fixed value in place of the -1 wildcard to find an open port.

I tried that, but got an error connecting the first time, so ended up switching back to the -1 value. Frustration quickly set in though with the issue remaining of not resuming so I looked at the ini file again.

What worked for me, and was really just something I was curious about was this:

Edit the /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini

Under [xrdp1] where port=-1 I noticed user name and password were set to ASK. If you set port=ask you will be given the option at the login prompt with username and password to choose a port.

Rather than install additional packages I found the easiest fix to be to set the ask option, connect the FIRST session (if I don't have one running already) on port -1 at the login with username and password.
After disconnecting the session, to resume an existing session always log in on the default port: 5910 and you will resume your existing session until you restart the remote computer or end the session when logging off.

To summarize:

• Edit the xrdp.ini file
• set port = ask
• connect from the remote machine, and at login if you have no existing session, specify port -1
• to resume a session enter the default of 5910

Solution 3:

Problem is that xrdp does not always connect to the same port. In case it didn't and you forgot the port number, you could login a ssh session and find out the number by

netstat -tulpn | grep vnc

and you will get something like the following

tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:5911          0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      5365/Xvnc

and then you know 5911 was the port you connected to.