Blank desktop when logging in via xrdp

I am trying to access Ubuntu 11.10 using Remote Desktop from a Win 7 machine. I installed xrdp. I launch the Windows remote desktop client and login in. I then get prompted for the user name and password.

It then logs in, but all I see is the background, no menus, nothing. I have to kill remote desktop by closing it.

Even if I right click , nothing. Any ideas???

The only reason I even went down the RDP road was that VNC would not work either, even after I enabled desktop sharing. I am in a bind as I need to connect to Ubuntu via Windows. In version 8 Ubuntu this was not an issue and it just worked.

You might still have another desktop manager in your .xsession config.

cd /home/youruser
echo "gnome-session --session=ubuntu-2d" > .xsession
sudo /etc/init.d/xrdp restart

I've had a similar issue and this solved it.

For future readers of this post (I found this post top of my Google search when I had the same problem), xrdp no longer seems to work with Ubuntu-2d in Ubuntu 14.04. Instead you must install xfce

sudo apt-get install xfce4

Then add the line

xfce4-session

to your ~/.xsession file instead of the gnome-session --session=ubuntu-2d line

Try this. Just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command(s) below:

sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback
echo “gnome-session -–session=gnome-fallback” > ~/.xsession
sudo /etc/init.d/xrdp restart