Every once a while, I experience problem to connecting to my Linux servers via Windows Remote Desktop. This is a very annoying issue, because all servers use the same configurations, and some servers throw error while some servers are doing okay. After spending countless of hours, here are my solutions:

• Add delay_ms=2000 to /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini
• Remove and rebuild the user’s home directory
• Set the color depth of Windows Remote Desktop Client to 24

For the first solution, it is pretty straight forward:

sudo nano /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini
delay_ms=2000

sudo systemctl restart xrdp.service; 

For the second solution, I cloned my home directory and delete all other hidden files, e.g.,

sudo su

#Make a copy first
rsync -avr /home/myuser/ /home/myuser_old/

Then I deleted most of the files such as .vnc/, .Xauthority/, .xsession-errors/. Here are the files I started with:

drwx------  19 myuser myuser 4096 Apr  9 10:12 .
drwxr-xr-x.  5 root      root        59 Apr  9 09:26 ..
-rw-------   1 myuser myuser 7409 Apr  9 09:26 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--   1 myuser myuser   18 Oct 30  2018 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r--   1 myuser myuser  193 Oct 30  2018 .bash_profile
-rw-r--r--   1 myuser myuser  231 Oct 30  2018 .bashrc
drwx------   2 myuser myuser   25 May 11  2022 .ssh

After I successfully logged in via xRDP, the system generated all of these files:

drwx------  19 myuser myuser 4096 Apr  9 10:12 .
drwxr-xr-x.  5 root      root        59 Apr  9 09:26 ..
-rw-------   1 myuser myuser 7409 Apr  9 09:26 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--   1 myuser myuser   18 Oct 30  2018 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r--   1 myuser myuser  193 Oct 30  2018 .bash_profile
-rw-r--r--   1 myuser myuser  231 Oct 30  2018 .bashrc
drwx------  16 myuser myuser 4096 Apr  9 10:05 .cache
drwxrwxr-x  15 myuser myuser  279 Apr  9 09:29 .config
drwx------   3 myuser myuser   25 Apr  9 09:27 .dbus
drwxr-xr-x   2 myuser myuser    6 Apr  9 09:27 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x   2 myuser myuser    6 Apr  9 09:27 Documents
drwxr-xr-x   2 myuser myuser    6 Apr  9 09:27 Downloads
dr-x------   2 myuser myuser    0 Apr  9 09:27 .gvfs
-rw-------   1 myuser myuser 1252 Apr  9 10:05 .ICEauthority
drwx------   3 myuser myuser   19 Apr  9 09:27 .local
drwxr-xr-x   2 myuser myuser    6 Apr  9 09:27 Music
drwxrwxr-x   2 myuser myuser    6 Apr  9 09:27 perl5
drwxr-xr-x   2 myuser myuser    6 Apr  9 09:27 Pictures
drwxr-xr-x   2 myuser myuser    6 Apr  9 09:27 Public
drwx------   2 myuser myuser   25 May 11  2022 .ssh
drwxr-xr-x   2 myuser myuser    6 Apr  9 09:27 Templates
drwxr-xr-t   2 myuser myuser    6 Apr  9 09:27 thinclient_drives
drwxr-xr-x   2 myuser myuser    6 Apr  9 09:27 Videos
drwx------   2 myuser myuser  316 Apr  9 10:04 .vnc
-rw-------   1 myuser myuser  242 Apr  9 10:04 .Xauthority
-rw-------   1 myuser myuser    0 Apr  9 10:04 .xsession-errors

That’s it, hope it helps.