x2go desktop sharing

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rob153
Posts: 22
Joined: 2020/05/17 13:52:00

x2go desktop sharing

Post by rob153 » 2021/07/13 20:52:29

Hi all,

Does anyone have experience with x2go desktop sharing? I don't manage to get it to work.

I'm running CentOS 8 with xfce. x2go works flawlessly when creating new desktop sessions.

What doesn't work is connecting to the existing desktop which would be my preferred way of working.
I am activating desktop sharing via the app intended for that on the server.
When trying to connect from the client, I get "no accessible desktop found".
On the server `x2golistdesktops` returns nothing.

The error reports I find online all point to an older issue which seemingly has long been resolved.

Has anyone else seen this issue? Any help very much appreciated.

chemal
Posts: 776
Joined: 2013/12/08 19:44:49

Re: x2go desktop sharing

Post by chemal » 2021/07/14 17:41:40

x2go doesn't give you access to a "physical" desktop session, if that is what you mean.

rob153
Posts: 22
Joined: 2020/05/17 13:52:00

Re: x2go desktop sharing

Post by rob153 » 2021/07/17 14:29:30

chemal wrote:
2021/07/14 17:41:40
x2go doesn't give you access to a "physical" desktop session, if that is what you mean.
I don't think that's true!? Then what is this additional desktop sharing tool good for?
https://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php/doc:usag ... op-sharing

scottro
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Re: x2go desktop sharing

Post by scottro » 2021/07/17 19:39:12

Interesting. I wasn't aware of that. Did you install x2goserver-desktopsharing? The article you point to is about Debian based systems, but dnf search x2goserver-desktopsharing does give a result. I've never used it so I'm not familiar with what it installs but installing that package would be the first step.
New users should check the FAQ and Read Me First pages

rob153
Posts: 22
Joined: 2020/05/17 13:52:00

Re: x2go desktop sharing

Post by rob153 » 2021/07/20 06:40:34

Yes I installed x2goserver-desktopsharing.

This gives me an application which displays an icon in my taskbar. When clicking on that icon, I get a menu where I can "activate" or "deactivate" desktop sharing.

However, when activated, the client still gives me "no accessible desktop found". I looked into it a little and understood that the client runs x2golistdesktops (a perl script) on the server to figure out which desktops can be connected to. When I run that on the server, despite desktop sharing activated, it returns nothing. That's convenient for debugging, because it means we can test without the need for a client at all.

I googled quite extensively and the only reports of this very same issue I found refer to an older version of the perl script and to the "ss -lxu" call. The version installed on CentOS 8 has this fix already applied. So I don't find any more bug reports about this and don't know what to look for next.

It seems as though people don't even know that x2go has the desktop sharing feature, maybe that's why there are hardly any users and nobody encountering this bug. A shame, because otherwise x2go is an awesome tool IMO and this extra feature would be extremely valuable to me.

owl102
Posts: 413
Joined: 2014/06/10 19:13:41

Re: x2go desktop sharing

Post by owl102 » 2021/07/20 12:55:25

Which Display Manager are you using? If GDM then try disabling Wayland by editing /etc/gdm/custom.conf.

See also: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/qu ... e-session/
German speaking forum for Fedora and CentOS: https://www.fedoraforum.de/

rob153
Posts: 22
Joined: 2020/05/17 13:52:00

Re: x2go desktop sharing

Post by rob153 » 2021/07/22 07:03:06

Yaay. I got it to work! It's very weird though. The x2golistdesktops script is listing sessions like so:

Code: Select all

my $outp=`ls -1 /tmp/ | grep x2godesktopsharing_\@*\@:*`;
@outp=split("\n","$outp");

for(my $i=0;$i<@outp;$i++)
{
	if (( -r "/tmp/@outp[$i]" ) and ( -w "/tmp/@outp[$i]" )) {
		my @ln=split("\@",@outp[$i]);
		if ( @ln[1] ne $uname )
		{
			push (@displays, "@ln[1]\@@ln[2]");
		}
	}
}
I removed the condition that the user is different, changed like so:

Code: Select all

my $outp=`ls -1 /tmp/ | grep x2godesktopsharing_\@*\@:*`;
@outp=split("\n","$outp");

for(my $i=0;$i<@outp;$i++)
{
	if (( -r "/tmp/@outp[$i]" ) and ( -w "/tmp/@outp[$i]" )) {
		my @ln=split("\@",@outp[$i]);
		#if ( @ln[1] ne $uname )
		#{
			push (@displays, "@ln[1]\@@ln[2]");
		#}
	}
}
Now it works as expected. I don't understand this though. Why would we want to list only sessions for other users and not the one we are logging in as? This makes little sense to me. Maybe the condition should be the exact opposite?

Going to see if I find the place where this can be reported.

chemal
Posts: 776
Joined: 2013/12/08 19:44:49

Re: x2go desktop sharing

Post by chemal » 2021/07/22 16:54:32

rob153 wrote:
2021/07/22 07:03:06
Why would we want to list only sessions for other users and not the one we are logging in as?
Because you share with others, not with yourself? Normally, you share a real x2go session with someone else. A physical desktop session is not under the control of x2go. It cannot intercept the X protocol like it normally does. Expect nothing special from x2go when you access a physical desktop session. There is little chance that x2go is better in reading out the bits from the frame buffer than vnc.

rob153
Posts: 22
Joined: 2020/05/17 13:52:00

Re: x2go desktop sharing

Post by rob153 » 2021/07/22 17:14:05

OH I see! So what you're saying is this IS expected behavior. Then I don't need to bother reporting anything.

Would you recommend another client then to access my own physical desktop session?

I just like the x2go client, in my experience it has fewer issues than other clients I have tried. For instance, it properly recognizes my keyboard layout which all other clients I tried had issues with. Also, it automatically scales the screen which many vnc clients do not support. I find it convenient and stable.

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