RDP on Raspberry Pi
If you are like me, the computers around my house are predominately Windows based. Which is fine until you try to remotely connect to the desktop of your RPi. The Raspbian OS just doesn’t work MS’s Remote Desktop Protocol out of the box.
It can though, and all it takes a few is a few steps to enable to the RDP on Raspbian. And in my opinion, since I’m mostly on Windows, it is well worth it just for the convenience. I’ll be using Raspbian Buster in my examples below. If you’re not already on Buster, check out my article on upgrading Stretch to Buster.
Installing Xrdp on Rpi
Lets begin by updating your RPi with the following commands.
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
Lets install Pixel on our RPi. Pixel is the default desktop environment on Raspbian desktop images. It’s stable, light weight, and fast. Which is perfect for running remotely on our RPi. To install Pixel, use the command below.
sudo apt-get install raspberrypi-ui-mods xinit xserver-xorg
After installing Pixel, it’s time for a reboot
sudo reboot now
Next we install the Xrdp package. It is available in the default Raspbian repositories. Use the command below to install Xrdp.
sudo apt install xrdp
The service will automatically start once it has installed, but we can check it’s status with the following command. It should display the status of “running” on the screen.
systemctl show -p SubState --value xrdp
Lastly we need to add the user that is running the service to the “ssl-cert” group. Xrdp uses the key file “/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key” which is only read-able to the users of the “ssl-cert” group. USe the folowing command to add the user to the group.
sudo adduser xrdp ssl-cert
Your RPi now supports RDP! You can easily connect to it using the MS Remote Desktop Connection your Windows machines.
Connecting to your RPi from Windows
From your windows machine, click on the ‘Start menu’ or Windows Search field and type “remote”.
Once the Remote Desktop Connection App launches, enter the IP address of your RPi. Then click the “Connect” button.
Enter the login credentials for your RPi. Then click ‘Ok’.
BAM! Just like that you have successfully connected to and just RDP-ed into your RPi. Well done!
