How to connect to CentOS 8 Desktop from Windows using RDP protocol

XRDP is an open-source implementation of the Microsoft Remote Desktop (RDP) that allows you to graphically control your system. With RDP, you can log in to the remote machine the same as you had logged into the local machine. It uses Port 3389 for its connection. In this tutorial, we will look at how to set up the Remote desktop Connection on CentOS 8.

Installing Desktop Environment

I’ll be using a CentOS server for this tutorial which did not has a Desktop environment installed yet. So the first step on my system is to install the Desktop environment. If you have already a GNOME Desktop installed on your CentOS system, then proceed with the next chapter to install XRDP.

To install GNOME on your remote machine, open up the terminal and run the following command:

Depending on your system, downloading and install the GNOME packages and dependencies may take some time.

Installing XRDP RDP Server

XRDP is available in the EPEL software repository. If EPEL is not enabled on your system, enable it by typing the following command:

Now install the XRDP package.

Once the installation is complete enable and start the XRDP service.

To verify the XRDP is running, type the following command:

If the XRDP service is running, the output should be like this as shown in the figure below:

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You can also verify the XRDP service state by using the following command:

Port should be Listening like below:

Configuring XRDP

The configuration file is /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini. By default, XRDP uses Linux desktop, which is in our case is GNOME. For the connection, you don’t need to make any changes in the configuration file. This file is divided into different sections and allows you to set global configuration settings such as security and listening address and you can also create different XRDP login sessions.

Open up configuration file /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini and add the following line at the end of the file.

After adding above line restart the XRDP service, using the following command:

Configuring the Firewall

If your firewall is running on your Centos 8, just add the rule to allow the XRDP port/service to allow traffic for the XRDP connection.

Connecting to the XRDP using Windows Machine

Windows, by default, uses the remote desktop client. To connect through Centos 8 using remote desktop type Remote desktop connection in the windows search bar and press enter.

Enter the IP address of the remote machine and click on connect.

It will prompt you to the login screen for the credentials. Enter username and password and click on Ok.

Once logged in, you should see the default GNOME Desktop. Now you can start interacting with the remote machine.

If you are using Mac OS, install the Microsoft Remote Desktop application from Mac App Store, whereas the Linux user can use RDP clients like Remmina or Vinagre.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have learned how to configure Remote desktop Connection in CentOS 8 and access using a windows machine. Using XRDP, allows you to manage and control your machine remotely from your local desktop machine with the use of a graphical interface.

Karim Buzdar

About the Author: Karim Buzdar holds a degree in telecommunication engineering and holds several sysadmin certifications. As an IT engineer and technical author, he writes for various web sites. You can reach Karim on LinkedIn

CentOS 7 Remote Desktop From Windows

In this guide i will show how to CentOS 7 Remote Desktop From Windows and install tigervnc, xrdp on CentOS 7.

TigerVNC is a high-performance, platform-neutral implementation of VNC, a client/server application that allows users to launch and interact with graphical applications on remote machines.

xrdp – open source remote desktop protocol(rdp) server. Based on the work of FreeRDP and rdesktop, xrdp uses the remote desktop protocol to present a GUI to the user.

First of all we need install Gnome GUI on our CentOS 7 or RHEL 7 – How To Install Gnome CentOS 7.

CentOS 7 XRDP Install

Tigervnc server centos 7 installation with xrdp we can do by using YUM command:

After xrdp and tigervnc-server installing start the xrdp service by using command:

To start xrdp service at boot, use the enable command:

To conform xrdp listening on 3389 port with netstat command:

Configure Firewall

Configure the firewalld to allow incoming RDP connections to TCP 3389 port:

Access CentOS From Windows Remote Desktop

Launch Windows rdp client and try access CentOS from Windows:

Access CentOS From Windows Remote Desktop

Ignore the warning of RDP certificate and accept the certificate:

Ignore the warning of RDP certificate and accept the certificate

In next window make sure you use module Xvnc Session and type your Linux user credentials:

Click OK and in get CentOS 7 remote Desktop:

How to Connect Windows machine with RDP from CentOS 7 / RHEL 7 Console

There are some scenarios where linux admins need to connect to windows servers with rdp from linux console or GUI. Whenever we do the minimal installation of CentOS 7 or RHEL 7 we do not have any tools to RDP windows machine. So we have to manually install ‘freerdp’ package which will allows us to take remote desktop of windows server from console or terminal.

‘freerdp’ package is available in the default CentOS 7 and RHEL 7 repositories. In Case you have installed your CentOS 7 or RHEL 7 with Desktop Environments like GNOME or KDE then ‘freerdp’ package will be installed automatically.

Install freerdp on CentOS 7 / RHEL 7

Let’s first install Desktop environment related packages using the beneath yum command. If we don’t install these packages then xfreerdp command will not work from command line

Once the freerdp is installed successfully then we have ‘xfreerdp’ command through we can connect to windows machine. Disconnect ssh session of your server and connect it again with ‘-X’ option. Example is shown below

Connect to Windows Machine with RDP from CentOS 7 / RHEL 7 Console or terminal

Run the below ‘xfreerdp’ command, replace the user name and ip address and screen resolution as per your setup.

Note: Before taking RDP, please make sure remote desktop option is enabled in windows server

That’s all from this article, If you like above steps, please don’t hesitate to share with your technical friends 🙂

Удаленный доступ на CentOs c Windows 7

Доброго времени суток всем. Ребята подскажите начинающему пожалуйста, каким путем можно зайти удаленно на CentOS с Windows 7. Пробовал поднять VNC сервер на CentOS и потом скачать на шиндовс 7 VNC Viewer чтобы удаленно подключиться к CentOS. Подключиться кончен же не получилось, может у кого есть опыт в этом? Подскажите пожалуйста?

3 ответа 3

Запустить без паролей с полным доступом:

Вариант с TeamViewer:

Но это всё, если CentOS десктопный. Если это всё-таки сервер — лучше ssh пока ничего нет (системы управления конфигурацией не в счёт). И тут есть Putty, Kitty, ttssh2 и даже через браузер можно найти.

SSH — это универсальный и оптимальный вариант, всегда доступен на любом Linux-дистрибутиве. Даёт полный доступ из командной строки. Клиент для Windows: http://www.putty.org/

Протокол VNC — даёт возможность графического удалённого доступа, но, фактически, посылает скриншоты. Также есть некоторые нюансы с автозагрузкой ( vino требуется что бы кто-то вошёл в систему, перед тем как он начёнт работать, если речь идёт о сервере — то лучше использовать x11vnc для этого, его можно использовать сразу с загрузкой X11)

Но если требуется графический удалённый доступ, но более эффективный (в плане трафика, прежде всего), чем VNC, то лучше использовать технологии NX или X2GO (по функционалу больше похожи на RDP, то есть пригодны и для терминального сервера). Инструкции по установке и настройке этих протоколов для CentOS легко ищутся в сети, не забудьте только указать номер версии вашей CentOS.

Для вашей задачи (тестирование и разработка), на мой взгляд, предпочтительнее использовать X2GO, устанавливается так: