docker-documentation/images/docker-rdesktop.md

title
rdesktop

linuxserver/rdesktop

Rdesktop - Ubuntu based containers containing full desktop environments in officially supported flavors accessible via RDP.

Supported Architectures

Our images support multiple architectures such as x86-64, arm64 and armhf. We utilise the docker manifest for multi-platform awareness. More information is available from docker here and our announcement here.

Simply pulling ghcr.io/linuxserver/rdesktop 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	Tag
x86-64	amd64-latest
arm64	arm64v8-latest
armhf	arm32v7-latest

Version Tags

This image provides various versions that are available via tags. latest tag usually provides the latest stable version. Others are considered under development and caution must be exercised when using them.

Tag	Description
latest	XFCE Focal
xfce-bionic	XFCE Bionic
kde-focal	KDE Focal
kde-bionic	KDE Bionic
mate-focal	MATE Focal
mate-bionic	MATE Bionic
i3-focal	i3 Focal
i3-bionic	i3 Bionic
openbox-focal	Openbox Focal
openbox-bionic	Openbox Bionic
icewm-focal	IceWM Focal
icewm-bionic	IceWM Bionic
alpine	XFCE Alpine

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 program

The KDE and i3 flavors need to be run in privileged mode to function properly

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. 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.

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: ghcr.io/linuxserver/rdesktop
    container_name: rdesktop
    privileged: true #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
    shm_size: "1gb" #optional
    restart: unless-stopped

docker cli (click here for more info)

docker run -d \
  --name=rdesktop \
  --privileged `#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` \
  --shm-size="1gb" `#optional` \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  ghcr.io/linuxserver/rdesktop

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

Miscellaneous Options

Parameter	Function
--shm-size=	We set this to 1 gig to prevent modern web browsers from crashing

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" }}' ghcr.io/linuxserver/rdesktop

Versions

• 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