[SOLVED] Remote Desktop from Windows to Debian on AWS?

Issue

I need to set up a Remote Desktop connection from Windows 8 to a Debian instance running on AWS. I've tried modifying the Ubuntu instructions from AWS, replacing the ubuntu-desktop with task-desktop. When I connect sesman tells me

connecting to sesman ip 127.0.0.1 port 3350
sesman connect ok
sending login info to session manager, please wait ...
xrdp_mm_process_login_response: login successful for display ..
started connecting
connecting to 127.0.0.1 5910
error - problem connecting

There's nothing helpful in /var/log/auth.log or /var/log/xrdp-sesman.log.

What am I missing here?

Solution

It turns out the place to look was in ~/.xsession-errors, where it was complaining that it couldn't find xfce4-session. After looking at the Debian wiki it looks like the way to start xfce on Debian is to use startxfce4, not xfce4-session.

So the complete solution seems to be:

1. Start with the template provided by AWS at the AWS website
2. Refer to the default user for Debian ('admin') instead of the default user for Ubuntu ('ubuntu')
3. Use some alternative desktop; I am using task-desktop instead of ubuntu-desktop here
4. Use startxfce4 instead of xfce4-session in .xsession

Answered By - Mike DeLong