remmina in ubuntu server

Question

I have a number of P4 512MB Ram PC's in my network. Those PC's are winXP joined in a windows domain. I was asked to find a solution as to how they can be utilized to work with newer versions of windows still joined in the domain. So I set them with Xubuntu and installed remmina. Each PC starts automatically on boot remmina and connects to a VM via RDP. What I tried to do is use remmina from ubuntu server because I really don't need the graphical environment but I fail because it cannot start the graphical interface of the app. Can Anyone tell me how to configure xorg so that it can open remmina?

Answer 1

If I understand this correctly, you are trying to configure a 'homebrew' kind of thin-client setup.

Ubuntu server will need to have xorg server running first before being able to start remmina.

Taken from this how-to: https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-run-x-applications-without-a-desktop-or-a-wm

Install your xorg server:

sudo apt-get install xorg

Test start your application:

xinit remmina $* -- :0 vt$XDG_VTNR

If that works, then you would want to look at having this start automatically. I would think that the login prompt in the RDP window would be enough security, so I would have the local linux user login automatically, and then start the xorg server with remmina.

Auto login taken from here: How can I get autologin at startup working on Ubuntu Server 16.04.1?

Setup autologin:

sudo systemctl edit [email protected]

Add this in the editor (Change "myusername" to the username on the machine you want to autologin.):

[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty --noissue --autologin myusername %I $TERM
Type=idle

Auto start application taken from here: Start ubuntu without a desktop environment but start an X application

Auto start remmina:

To start the X session automatically, open your user's .bashrc file nano ~/.bashrc and add something like this to the end of the file:

if [ $(tty) == "/dev/tty1" ]; then
    while true; do xinit remmina $* -- :0 vt$XDG_VTNR; echo "Again [$?]..."; done
fi

This will respawn the X server, so if your application quits for any reason, it will restart the X server automatically.