Xfce Forum

agerard

Member

Registered: 2020-02-18

Posts: 1

my xfce session seems to time out after remote desktop disconnect

I connect to an Ubuntu 18 VM via RDP (VMWare Horizon client) for work, and when I disconnect (NOT logging off) I am repeatedly losing my ability to reconnect to the ongoing session after some time has passed. This doesn't happen with gnome shell using the same connection setup, so I know it's not a VMWare setting - but I am currently unable to use gnome because the software-based display "card" on the VM is having issues since a system update, and only works with xfce. Any suggestions on how to track this problem down would be greatly appreciated.

Note that I'm not concerned with saving sessions, as that still loses terminal windows so I can't resume where I left off. I just want the session to persist and want to be able to reconnect to it after a long break/change in location. I'm comfortable using Ubuntu but am not a Linux wizard - If anyone can point me to some way to see session logs and/or determine when and how they are terminating I think that would be a start. If anyone knows of a way to specify that the session should NEVER time out, that would also be helpful. As would any other suggestions. Really hoping there's a setting I'm missing somewhere!

TIA

rko

Member

Registered: 2023-01-26

Posts: 2

Re: my xfce session seems to time out after remote desktop disconnect

I have the same problem, running xfce4 on a vmware virtual host, and connecting to the host via horizon client.
It's not easy to debug, since I don't know what I'm looking for. XFCE keeps shutting down after the session is disconnected for 'some' time.
Next time I'm going to try is probably to see it this 'some' time can be more exactly defined, so it could be tied to some timeout, but I don't know what process to debug/strace exactly to get an exact clue for the wm shutdown.

Does anyone give a suggestion?

bigchief

Member

Registered: 2023-09-05

Posts: 4

Re: my xfce session seems to time out after remote desktop disconnect

I have the same problem connecting to a headless Debian 11 server from Windows on a LAN. Configured XFCE4 on Debian with a dedicated user. I can connect fine and fully operate the server. But if I leave the session open and come back an hour later the session has ended and the server has shut down. I have diagnosed the server, i.e. temperatures and system errors and found nothing. It keeps running as long as I don't try to remote connect. If I remote and log out or leave the session running, sooner or later the server goes offline. I have looked at the XFCE config and tried to find other settings that my be causing this but found nothing. System logs show no errors not even the shutdown but the thing is off! Any suggestions would be welcome.

bigchief

Member

Registered: 2023-09-05

Posts: 4

Re: my xfce session seems to time out after remote desktop disconnect

After some additional tinkering and testing, this problem seems to have something to do with the Debian power settings and the user access control mechanism. I had already disabled sleep mode bacause it did not function correctly before RDP. It would not allow me to login after sleep and forced a restart. After disabling sleep mode the screen would go dark at the specified time and I had to login again but the computer did not shut down. I have now set the screen to never turn off. Now the system stays on continuously (for the last 24 hrs. at least) and not shut down and my remote connection has persisted. Yah! While that is what I want, as I will be running this box headless, it is not clear what this has to do with RDP or XFCE. Something about security/user access control and RDP is not playing nice. I don't know enough about Linux minutiae at this level to understand what or where its going wrong. Ideas and suggestions welcome.

bigchief

Member

Registered: 2023-09-05

Posts: 4

Re: my xfce session seems to time out after remote desktop disconnect

OOPS! Logged out of remote session. Debian has crashed. Forced to restart.

bigchief

Member

Registered: 2023-09-05

Posts: 4

Re: my xfce session seems to time out after remote desktop disconnect

OK. Here's my fix. If you want to run XRDP on XFCE on legacy Intel 32-bit machines do not use Debian 32. I have spent over a week and tried every concievable hack to fix. It simply deosn't work for me.

I have now installed MX-Linux 32-bit instead. This is a clean simple Linux distro that worked out of the box on my vintage multi-core Dell (1999). XRDP, XFCE and SSH all work without crashing. Why do I want to do this? This box has has built in 5.1 sound and has been running my Plex server, DVDs and HD audio for over 20 years. All I wanted to do was run it headless with remote access. Now it does.