docker-documentation/images/docker-rdesktop.md

title
rdesktop

linuxserver/rdesktop

Rdesktop - Containers containing full desktop environments in many popular flavors for Alpine, Ubuntu, Arch, and Fedora accessible via RDP.

Supported Architectures

We utilise the docker manifest for multi-platform awareness. More information is available from docker here and our announcement here.

Simply pulling lscr.io/linuxserver/rdesktop:latest should retrieve the correct image for your arch, but you can also pull specific arch images via tags.

The architectures supported by this image are:

Architecture	Available	Tag
x86-64	✅	amd64-<version tag>
arm64	✅	arm64v8-<version tag>
armhf	✅	arm32v7-<version tag>

Version Tags

This image provides various versions that are available via tags. Please read the descriptions carefully and exercise caution when using unstable or development tags.

Tag	Available	Description
latest	✅	XFCE Alpine
ubuntu-xfce	✅	XFCE Ubuntu
fedora-xfce	✅	XFCE Fedora
arch-xfce	✅	XFCE Arch
alpine-kde	✅	KDE Alpine
ubuntu-kde	✅	KDE Ubuntu
fedora-kde	✅	KDE Fedora
arch-kde	✅	KDE Arch
alpine-mate	✅	MATE Alpine
ubuntu-mate	✅	MATE Ubuntu
fedora-mate	✅	MATE Fedora
arch-mate	✅	MATE Arch
alpine-i3	✅	i3 Alpine
ubuntu-i3	✅	i3 Ubuntu
fedora-i3	✅	i3 Fedora
arch-i3	✅	i3 Arch
alpine-openbox	✅	Openbox Alpine
ubuntu-openbox	✅	Openbox Ubuntu
fedora-openbox	✅	Openbox Fedora
arch-openbox	✅	Openbox Arch
alpine-icewm	✅	IceWM Alpine
ubuntu-icewm	✅	IceWM Ubuntu
fedora-icewm	✅	IceWM Fedora
arch-icewm	✅	IceWM Arch

Application Setup

The Default USERNAME and PASSWORD is: abc/abc

Unlike our other containers these Desktops are not designed to be upgraded by Docker, you will keep your home directoy but anything you installed system level will be lost if you upgrade an existing container. To keep packages up to date instead use Ubuntu's own apt, Alpine's apk, Fedora's dnf, or Arch's pacman program

You will need a Remote Desktop client to access this container Wikipedia List, by default it listens on 3389, but you can change that port to whatever you wish on the host side IE 3390:3389. The first thing you should do when you login to the container is to change the abc users password by issuing the passwd command.

Modern GUI desktop apps (including some flavors terminals) have issues with the latest Docker and syscall compatibility, you can use Docker with the --security-opt seccomp=unconfined setting to allow these syscalls or try podman as they have updated their codebase to support them

If you ever lose your password you can always reset it by execing into the container as root:

docker exec -it rdesktop passwd abc

By default we perform all logic for the abc user and we reccomend using that user only in the container, but new users can be added as long as there is a startwm.sh executable script in their home directory. All of these containers are configured with passwordless sudo, we make no efforts to secure or harden these containers and we do not reccomend ever publishing their ports to the public Internet.

Hardware Acceleration (Ubuntu Container Only)

Many desktop application will need access to a GPU to function properly and even some Desktop Environments have compisitor effects that will not function without a GPU. This is not a hard requirement and all base images will function without a video device mounted into the container.

Intel/ATI/AMD

To leverage hardware acceleration you will need to mount /dev/dri video device inside of the conainer.

--device=/dev/dri:/dev/dri

We will automatically ensure the abc user inside of the container has the proper permissions to access this device.

Nvidia

Hardware acceleration users for Nvidia will need to install the container runtime provided by Nvidia on their host, instructions can be found here: https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvidia-docker

We automatically add the necessary environment variable that will utilise all the features available on a GPU on the host. Once nvidia-docker is installed on your host you will need to re/create the docker container with the nvidia container runtime --runtime=nvidia and add an environment variable -e NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all (can also be set to a specific gpu's UUID, this can be discovered by running nvidia-smi --query-gpu=gpu_name,gpu_uuid --format=csv ). NVIDIA automatically mounts the GPU and drivers from your host into the container.

Arm Devices

Best effort is made to install tools to allow mounting in /dev/dri on Arm devices. In most cases if /dev/dri exists on the host it should just work. If running a Raspberry Pi 4 be sure to enable dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d in your usercfg.txt.

Usage

To help you get started creating a container from this image you can either use docker-compose or the docker cli.

docker-compose (recommended, click here for more info)

---
version: "2.1"
services:
  rdesktop:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/rdesktop:latest
    container_name: rdesktop
    security_opt:
      - seccomp:unconfined #optional
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Europe/London
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock #optional
      - /path/to/data:/config #optional
    ports:
      - 3389:3389
    devices:
      - /dev/dri:/dev/dri #optional
    shm_size: "1gb" #optional
    restart: unless-stopped

docker cli (click here for more info)

docker run -d \
  --name=rdesktop \
  --security-opt seccomp=unconfined `#optional` \
  -e PUID=1000 \
  -e PGID=1000 \
  -e TZ=Europe/London \
  -p 3389:3389 \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock `#optional` \
  -v /path/to/data:/config `#optional` \
  --device /dev/dri:/dev/dri `#optional` \
  --shm-size="1gb" `#optional` \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  lscr.io/linuxserver/rdesktop:latest

Parameters

Docker images are configured using parameters passed at runtime (such as those above). These parameters are separated by a colon and indicate <external>:<internal> respectively. For example, -p 8080:80 would expose port 80 from inside the container to be accessible from the host's IP on port 8080 outside the container.

Ports (-p)

Parameter	Function
3389	RDP access port

Environment Variables (-e)

Env	Function
PUID=1000	for UserID - see below for explanation
PGID=1000	for GroupID - see below for explanation
TZ=Europe/London	Specify a timezone to use EG Europe/London

Volume Mappings (-v)

Volume	Function
/var/run/docker.sock	Docker Socket on the system, if you want to use Docker in the container
/config	abc users home directory

Device Mappings (--device)

Parameter	Function
/dev/dri	Add this for GL support (Linux hosts only)

Miscellaneous Options

Parameter	Function
--shm-size=	We set this to 1 gig to prevent modern web browsers from crashing
--security-opt seccomp=unconfined	For Docker Engine only, many modern gui apps need this to function as syscalls are unkown to Docker

Environment variables from files (Docker secrets)

You can set any environment variable from a file by using a special prepend FILE__.

As an example:

-e FILE__PASSWORD=/run/secrets/mysecretpassword

Will set the environment variable PASSWORD based on the contents of the /run/secrets/mysecretpassword file.

Umask for running applications

For all of our images we provide the ability to override the default umask settings for services started within the containers using the optional -e UMASK=022 setting. Keep in mind umask is not chmod it subtracts from permissions based on it's value it does not add. Please read up here before asking for support.

User / Group Identifiers

When using volumes (-v flags), permissions issues can arise between the host OS and the container, we avoid this issue by allowing you to specify the user PUID and group PGID.

Ensure any volume directories on the host are owned by the same user you specify and any permissions issues will vanish like magic.

In this instance PUID=1000 and PGID=1000, to find yours use id user as below:

  $ id username
    uid=1000(dockeruser) gid=1000(dockergroup) groups=1000(dockergroup)

Docker Mods

We publish various Docker Mods to enable additional functionality within the containers. The list of Mods available for this image (if any) as well as universal mods that can be applied to any one of our images can be accessed via the dynamic badges above.

Support Info

• Shell access whilst the container is running:
  • docker exec -it rdesktop /bin/bash
• To monitor the logs of the container in realtime:
  • docker logs -f rdesktop
• Container version number
  • docker inspect -f '{{ index .Config.Labels "build_version" }}' rdesktop
• Image version number
  • docker inspect -f '{{ index .Config.Labels "build_version" }}' lscr.io/linuxserver/rdesktop:latest

Versions

• 05.03.22: - Organize tags differently to run Ubuntu at latest LTS, make Alpine latest, add docs about GPU accel.
• 05.05.21: - Reduce default packages to their flavor specific basics.
• 05.04.21: - Add Alpine flavor.
• 06.04.20: - Start PulseAudio in images to support audio
• 28.02.20: - Initial Releases