RDP Sessions For All Your LLM Needs

RDP Sessions in Linux are not actually that well documented - but if you run a lot of headless servers - you probably will eventually need it, and  it is nice to have a handy reference guide around to setting one up.  We will look at three quick parts to the RDP. We also will keep this guide short - we are all busy!

• Installing the RDP Server using apt install and then activating it  using systemctl
• Installing the RDP Client and getting a connection going
• Tunnelling a RDP through a ssh for very secure over the internet desktops.

Let's get started!

Part A. Installing The RDP Server

Install your supports

sudo apt update
sudo apt install xfce4 xfce4-goodies xrdp xorgxrdp -y

Configure xfce4 for your any user that will use it.

echo "startxfce4" > ~/.xsession
chmod +x ~/.xsession

Once you have this done - you will need it to start automatically, so:

sudo systemctl enable --now xrdp

And then make sure it is working:

systemctl status xrdp

It will look like this if it is good:

Is it running? Well let's check:

nmap 192.168.1.3

Yes, atypically it binds to 3389 and you can see the port is open.

Part B. Installing  / Running  XFreedp3 for a Remote Desktop

• This is your client that will connect to the remote desktop that is waiting. In ParrotOS it is already built in - and with many Linux distros, so open a terminal and just type xfreedp3 and see if something shows up.

sudo apt install flatpak
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak install flathub com.freerdp.FreeRDP
flatpak run com.freerdp.FreeRDP

Remote Connecting to a client desktop.  

• Atypically it will resort to a very small desktop so these settings are suggested:

xfreerdp3 /v:192.168.1.3 /u:<user> /size:1920x1080

It will ask for Domain <hit enter> and then enter your user password:

Part C. A Secure SSH to RDP (And Closing Port 3389)

• Over the internet is an entire different game, and people are probably going to want a lot more security on their connection.  So first steps  - bind RDP only to local host, inside /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini change the bindings from your external to internal ip address 127.0.0.1

[Globals]
address=127.0.0.1
port=3389

Next you want to make a Local tunnel to the now internal only RDP port, so in ssh it would look like the following:

ssh -N -L 3390:localhost:3389 <user>@<ip>

However you may need to expand this as:

ssh -X -L 192.168.1.64:3390:localhost:3389 c@192.168.1.3

This command is rare, and often very poorly documented on the internet so we will explain it in detail.

• -X (Allow graphical trunking). It can be debated if this is required for an RDP..
• -L (Locally a port will be opened)
• 192.168.1.64:3390  This is the local port that we are binding to where we are working if we wanted to bind only to a local port we could change it to 127.0.0.1:3390
• localhost:3389 This is not always intuitive but this is where the bind will sit on the remote machine.
• c@192.168.1.3  - Why are we adding this if we are specifying the localhost:3389  - this is the account on the remote machine that will permit the localhost:3389

Please note if you need more training and tutorials on how powerful SSH (how it can pipe mysql / html / anything) check out our tutorial:

ssh workups - plumbing and piping - tunneling, reverse tunneling, socks5, ssh jumps and funsies.

ssh workups - plumbing and piping - tunneling, reverse tunneling, socks5, ssh jumps and funsies.

Hot Configthinkmeltprotonmail.com

Finally now that the tunnel is open we then pipe xfreedp3 through it with:

xfreedp3 /v:192.168.1.64:3390 /u:c /size:640x480

In this instance it will ask if we trust the remote certificate as in:

We now get our little 640x480 desktop

Please note we made no attempt to directly connect to the RDP port, we only connected to our local ssh tunnel.

Speed

• Because you are tunneling through a LOT of encryption it may be very slow, but it will give you secure remote desktops.