xrdp with NVidia driver: gnome does not start

This document (7023179) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 Service Pack 3 (SLES 12 SP3)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 Service Pack 2 (SLES 12 SP2)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 Service Pack 1 (SLES 12 SP1)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Workstation Extension 12

Situation

xrdp has been installed and configured, you also using the NVidia driver from SUSE Linux Enterprise Workstation Extension 12, however if you try to establish a connection to the default gnome desktop environment you get a black screen on the client. In /var/log/messages on the xrdp server you find following log entries:

gnome-session-binary[16018]: WARNING: software acceleration check failed: Child process exited with code 1
xrdp-sesman: pam_unix(xrdp-sesman:session): session closed for user root
org.a11y.atspi.Registry[16036]: XIO:  fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server ":200.0"

Resolution

The issue is caused by incompatible libraries. A solution is to make sure xrdp does not use any of the NVidia libraries, but use the Mesa libraries.

If you installed the NVidia driver after a normal OS installtion, all you need to do is editing /etc/xrdp/sesman.ini in section [SessionVariables] add

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib64:/usr/lib

afterward restart xrdp

systemctl restart xrdp

If you installed the NVidia driver already during the OS installation, you need to install the Mesa libraries as well. To do this create a textfile with following content

Mesa-libGLESv2-2
Mesa-libglapi0
Mesa-libGL1
Mesa-libEGL1
libxcb-present0
libxcb-dri3-0
libxcb-dri2-0

and install the packages from the list with

cat <filelist> | xargs zypper install

Disclaimer

This Support Knowledgebase provides a valuable tool for SUSE customers and parties interested in our products and solutions to acquire information, ideas and learn from one another. Materials are provided for informational, personal or non-commercial use within your organization and are presented "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.