My host machine is using Remote Desktop Connection Manager (RDCM)
on Windows10
. Using RDCM
to connect to several remote machines running CentOS7
(and connecting via xrdp
(used https://www.itzgeek.com/how-tos/linux/centos-how-tos/install-xrdp-on-centos-7-rhel-7.html to set up)) with their default Gnome desktop
GUIs. One of the sessions in RDCM
appears unresponsive to any cursor clicking.
Some info on the problem:
- The session on this problem machine appears to be frozen after several days of remaining connected and working fine (while all of the other are OK).
- When I move the cursor over this remote GUI session, the cursor changes to look like how it should in that OS, but I cannot click on anything or interact with anything in the remote desktop in any way
- (and I am unable to use the remote OS's hotkeys to try anything because they only register with my local Windows OS).
- Sometimes mouse clicks will work, but when able to click, in say a text document, the key-presses seem to go unregistered.
- However, I can still ssh into this machine via terminal, but would like to avoid a hard KILL of the session in the interest of saving data that is not saved in that session.
- Firewalld is inactive.
This appears to happen when connected to the remote server desktop over a period of many days where the remote server is a linux (CentOS7) box (does not appear to happen when connecting to a Windows server). I am able to log back into the linux session (after, say, the session screen goes to sleep) without problems, but once logged in can only move the cursor and clicking appears to do nothing.
Has anyone had this problem before? Any more debugging into that I should collect to make problem clearer (never used remote desktop stuff or centOS7 before)? What can be done to fix this?
Best Answer
This seems to be a common issue with gnome (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=675345 and https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=767173). What seems to help is using another terminal on local machine to ssh into the remote and restarting the gnome desktop manager via
systemctl restart gdm.service
. After a minute or two, going back to the frozen remote desktop session, it again appears to register mouse clicks.Other people seeming to have this same issue have also had success connecting to the remote desktop via VNC (as opposed to RDP) (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=767173#90):
Worst case scenario, can use a separate terminal to run
pkill -KILL -u <username>
to kill all of that frozen user's sessions (note this will cause loss of unsaved data for all sessions). Can see what users are running on the server viapstree -ua
.UPDATE:
Found more info on this problem here: https://www.fmtconsultants.com/how-to-prevent-frozen-sessions-in-remote-desktop-services-with-automatic-logout/ From the article:
Will update as I debug for better solutions
One way I've fixed this problem permanently is to switch the desktop GUI from Gnome to Mate.