xrdp - an open source RDP server

Overview

xrdp provides a graphical login to remote machines using Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). xrdp accepts connections from a variety of RDP clients:

• FreeRDP
• rdesktop
• KRDC
• NeutrinoRDP
• Windows MSTSC (Microsoft Terminal Services Client, aka mstsc.exe)
• Microsoft Remote Desktop (found on Microsoft Store, which is distinct from MSTSC)

Many of these work on some or all of Windows, Mac OS, iOS, and/or Android.

RDP transport is encrypted using TLS by default.

Features

Remote Desktop Access

• Connect to a Linux desktop using RDP from anywhere (requires xorgxrdp Xorg module)
• Reconnect to an existing session
• Session resizing (both on-connect and on-the-fly)
• RDP/VNC proxy (connect to another RDP/VNC server via xrdp)

Access to Remote Resources

• Two-way clipboard transfer (text, bitmap, file)
• Audio redirection (requires to build additional modules)
• Microphone redirection (requires to build additional modules)
• Drive redirection (mount local client drives on remote machine)

Supported Platforms

xrdp primarily targets GNU/Linux operating system. x86 (including x86-64) and ARM processors are most mature architecture to run xrdp on. See also Platform Support Tier.

Some components such as xorgxrdp and RemoteFX codec have special optimization for x86 using SIMD instructions. So running xrdp on x86 processors will get fully accelerated experience.

Quick Start

Most Linux distributions should distribute the latest release of xrdp in their repository. You would need xrdp and xorgxrdp packages for the best experience. It is recommended that xrdp depends on xorgxrdp, so it should be sufficient to install xrdp. If xorgxrdp is not provided, use Xvnc server.

xrdp listens on 3389/tcp. Make sure your firewall accepts connection to 3389/tcp from where you want to access.

Ubuntu / Debian

apt install xrdp

RedHat / CentOS / Fedora

On RedHat and CentOS, make sure to enable EPEL packages first.

yum install epel-release

Install xrdp package.

yum install xrdp

yum is being replaced with dnf, so you may need to use dnf instead of yum in the above commands.

Compiling

See also https://github.com/neutrinolabs/xrdp/wiki#building-from-sources

Prerequisites

To compile xrdp from the packaged sources, you need basic build tools - a compiler (gcc or clang) and the make program. Additionally, you would need openssl-devel, pam-devel, libX11-devel, libXfixes-devel, libXrandr-devel. More additional software would be needed depending on your configuration.

To compile xrdp from a checked out git repository, you would additionally need autoconf, automake, libtool and pkg-config.

Get the source and build it

If compiling from the packaged source, unpack the tarball and change to the resulting directory.

If compiling from a checked out repository, please make sure you've got the submodules cloned too (use git clone --recursive https://github.com/neutrinolabs/xrdp)

Then run following commands to compile and install xrdp:

./bootstrap
./configure
make
sudo make install

If you want to use audio redirection, you need to build and install additional pulseaudio modules. The build instructions can be found at wiki.

• How to set up audio redirection

Directory Structure

xrdp
├── common ······ common code
├── docs ········ documentation
├── fontutils ··· font handling utilities
├── genkeymap ··· keymap generator
├── instfiles ··· installable data file
├── keygen ······ xrdp RSA key pair generator
├── libpainter ·· painter library
├── librfxcodec · RFX codec library
├── libxrdp ····· core RDP protocol implementation
├── m4 ·········· Autoconf macros
├── mc ·········· media center module
├── neutrinordp · RDP client module for proxying RDP connections using NeutrinoRDP
├── pkgconfig ··· pkg-config configuration
├── scripts ····· build scripts
├┬─ sesman ······ session manager for xrdp
|├── chansrv ···· channel server for xrdp
|├── libsesman ·· Code common to sesman and its related executables
|└── tools ······ session management tools for sys admins
├── tests ······· tests for the code
├┬─ tools ······· tools
|└┬─ devel ······ development tools
| ├── gtcp_proxy  GTK app that forwards TCP connections to a remote host
| └── tcp_proxy · CLI app that forwards TCP connections to a remote host
├── vnc ········· VNC client module for xrdp
├── vrplayer ···· QT player redirecting video/audio to clients over xrdpvr channel
├── xrdp ········ main server code
├── xrdpapi ····· virtual channel API
├── xrdpvr ······ API for playing media over RDP
└── xup ········· xorgxrdp client module