Documentation for how to enable gnome-remote-desktop on a completly headless system

[Robert Fletcher]

Asked to create a new bug from https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-remote-desktop/+bug/2063333

I am on a completely headless system starting from a minimal ubuntu-server 24.04 installation.
I have installed the desktop using apt install ubuntu-desktop

I want to use the new gnome-remote-desktop so that I can create a developer machine in a VM environment that can be accessed through a thin client as an example using Microsoft RDP

I suspect there is some missing documentation.

Starting the service using systemctl start gnome-remote-desktop.service

results in:

journalctl -xeu gnome-remote-desktop.service
Apr 30 10:16:39 localhost systemd[1]: Starting gnome-remote-desktop.service - GNOME Remote Desktop...
░░ Subject: A start job for unit gnome-remote-desktop.service has begun execution
░░ Defined-By: systemd
░░ Support: http://www.ubuntu.com/support
░░
░░ A start job for unit gnome-remote-desktop.service has begun execution.
░░
░░ The job identifier is 2929.
Apr 30 10:16:39 localhost (p-daemon)[1613]: gnome-remote-desktop.service: Failed to determine user credentials: No such process
Apr 30 10:16:39 localhost systemd[1]: gnome-remote-desktop.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=217/USER
░░ Subject: Unit process exited
░░ Defined-By: systemd
░░ Support: http://www.ubuntu.com/support
░░
░░ An ExecStart= process belonging to unit gnome-remote-desktop.service has exited.
░░
░░ The process' exit code is 'exited' and its exit status is 217.

Running sudo systemd-sysusers does create some new users, restarting the remote desktop now gives:
May 02 14:27:47 localhost gnome-remote-de[36906]: Init TPM credentials failed because No TPM device found, using GKeyFile as fallback
May 02 14:27:47 localhost gnome-remote-de[36906]: Init file credentials failed: Error creating directory /var/lib/gnome-remote-desktop: Permission denied
May 02 14:27:47 localhost gnome-remote-desktop-daemon[36906]: **
May 02 14:27:47 localhost gnome-remote-desktop-daemon[36906]: ERROR:../src/grd-settings.c:345:grd_settings_constructed: assertion failed: (priv->credentials)
May 02 14:27:47 localhost gnome-remote-desktop-daemon[36906]: Bail out! ERROR:../src/grd-settings.c:345:grd_settings_constructed: assertion failed: (priv->credentials)
May 02 14:27:47 localhost systemd[1]: gnome-remote-desktop.service: Main process exited, code=dumped, status=6/ABRT

As a headless system I can not use any UI controls so I suspect there is some command / config that needs to to be set before launching rdp

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Are you able to file this issue upstream also?

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-remote-desktop/-/issues

There is also the grdctrl command, but I don't see enough detail in its manpage to solve your request.

[Robert Fletcher (robrotheram)]

I have raised it: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-remote-desktop/-/issues/202

[Robert Fletcher (robrotheram)]

From Upstream

I tried to enable using some commands through grdctl with no such luck grdctl enable

[20:15:58:493] [60992:0000ee40] [ERROR][com.freerdp.crypto] - [x509_utils_from_pem]: BIO_new failed for certificate
RDP server certificate is invalid.
Usage: grdctl [OPTIONS...] COMMAND [SUBCOMMAND]...

grdctl --headless enable

[20:[61000:0000ee48] [ERROR][com.freerdp.crypto] - [x509_utils_from_pem]: BIO_new failed for certificate 16:02:476]
RDP server certificate is invalid.
Init TPM credentials failed because No TPM device found, using GKeyFile as fallback.
Usage: grdctl [OPTIONS...] COMMAND [SUBCOMMAND]...

grdctl --system enable

Error changing to home directory /var/lib/gnome-remote-desktop: No such file or directory

From @pnowack
That's a packaging issue. Please report that to your distro. g-r-d installs both a sysusers and a tmpfiles file for the user for the system daemon and its config dirs.
The sysusers and tmpfiles hooks usually run on a reboot, but they also MUST run when installing the respective pkg, in particular: after the decompression of the files (post-installation hooks). This works fine on other distros, like Arch (pacman automatically detects such sysusers- or tmpfiles-file installation and runs the respective hooks for that).
apt or dpkg must also be able to correctly handle this (regardless of the pkg).

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Ok, so we also need to run

sudo systemd-tmpfiles

when we fix https://launchpad.net/bugs/2063333

You can run that. I don't know if that will be enough to fix your issue though.