How to access Linux via Windows Remote Desktop

One of the advantages of the Linux-based SIFT Workstation, is the ability to deploy it at remote locations, for quick forensics assessments. However after installation, you need a method of remotely connecting to that desktop.

The following steps provide instructions on how to install a remote desktop server. It was taken from articles posted on AskUbuntu and Teaking4All (links below).

Step 1 – Install xRDP
Open Terminal (Crtl+Alt+T) and execute the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xrdp

Step 2 – Install XFCE4 ( Unity doesn't seem to support xRDP in Ubuntu 14.04; although, in Ubuntu 12.04 it was supported ). That's why we install Xfce4.

sudo apt-get install xfce4

Step 3 – Configure xRDP
In this step, we modify two files to make sure xRDP uses Xfce4. First we need to create, or edit, our .xsession file in our home directory. We can either use nano or simply redirect an echo statement (easier):

echo xfce4-session >~/.xsession

The second file we need to edit is the startup file for xRDP, so it will start Xfce4.

sudo nano /etc/xrdp/startwm.sh

The content should look like this (pay attention to the last line and ignore . /etc/X11/Xsession):

#!/bin/sh

if [ -r /etc/default/locale ]; then
  . /etc/default/locale
  export LANG LANGUAGE
fi

startxfce4

Step 4 – Restart xRDP
To make all these changes effective, restart xRDP as such:

sudo service xrdp restart

The above information was taken from the following posts:

- https://askubuntu.com/questions/592537/can-i-access-ubuntu-from-windows-remotely

- https://www.tweaking4all.com/software/linux-software/use-xrdp-remote-access-ubuntu-14-04/