Change NoMachine virtual desktop user

[noj]

Hello All-

We are running NX Enterprise Desktop 6.9.2 on CentOS 7.  When running virtual desktops (side note we followed the steps here to make the Virtual desktops perform well when running Gnome on Nvidia) if I connect as myself to a system to test things out, then disconnect, the NX server will never allow anyone else to connect as themselves.  If I run /etc/NX/nxserver –list, I can see a virtual session running with my username.  If I terminate that session and have the other user try to connect, a new session using my username will spin up and that user will get stuck at a screen that says waiting for desktop authorization.  Even if I restart nxserver, or even reboot the system, the same thing will happen.

How do I get the NX server to stop trying to use my username in the desktop session and allow users to create a new vd session as themselves?

[Britgirl]

Hi,

Enterprise Desktop is a product for access to the physical desktop of the remote server.  That means anyone connecting will connect to the physical display of the host. Multiple users can connect and see the same physical desktop (not their own individual virtual one).

By default anyone connecting to a desktop that is not their own must receive authorization from the owner of the desktop. You can read more about this here:

How to authorize connections to remote desktop automatically or only upon owner’s authorization with NoMachine https://www.nomachine.com/AR04K00663

The article you mention is for NoMachine virtual desktops which are obtained if you have a product from the Terminal Server range,  such as Workstation (this supports up to 4 virtual desktops). Anyone connecting will get their own virtual Linux desktop.

How do I get the NX server to stop trying to use my username in the desktop session and allow users to create a new vd session as themselves?

Any product from the Terminal Server range lets users create a new virtual session so they each have their own individual desktop instance. Check what you have installed again and if it is not one from the Terminal Server range, you can get the latest version from our website (6.12).

 

[noj]

Thank you for pointing that out… we actually started with desktop and then switched to workstation and I hadn’t realized I had still been using the old desktop RPM in the installation playbook.  I suspect that installing that will fix the issue I am seeing as I don’t remember running into this issue previously.  Now I need to go back and check all of my installations and make sure they are using the right RPM… doh!

On a side note though, I found what I needed to change.  The DisplayOwner gets set in /usr/NX/etc/server.cfg.  Setting that back to default after a test connection will allow the permanent user to connect to a new virtual desktop that is owned by them.

[noj]

Actually I confused myself a bit… this is indeed on Enterprise Desktop that I wanted to do this.  We use the Desktop version as we have a one-to-one association between users and their desktops, and we are using NX to provide remote GUI access.

I checked in the documentation and confirmed with my sales rep that Virtual Desktops are indeed supported and approved by our Enterprise Desktop license, as long as its a one-to-one and we are not trying to use it like a terminal server or with multiple people connected concurrently.  My issue was that I,  as a system administrator,  need to occasionally connect to the NX host as myself to verify that things are running properly and then disconnect before I let a user know that they can connect as themselves.  Doing so caused the DisplayOwner to be set in the server.cfg file, and I had to remove that to let it reset to default before letting a user know that they could connect as themselves.

[Britgirl]

The term “virtual desktop” in NoMachine refers to the Terminal Server products. Maybe you are referring to virtual desktops as the VMs where you have installed Enterprise Desktop?

Enterprise Desktop (version 6) is for access to the physical display, and when the host is headless on Linux (no local X server found) NoMachine creates a “virtual” one using its own embedded X server.

I think you know about these already, but I’ll paste them here for other readers. The following keys in  the server configuration file allow for managing the behavior of the server when it needs to create the X11 display:

#
# Enable or disable the automatic creation of an X11 display when no
# X servers are running on this host (e.g. headless machine) to let
# users connect to the desktop. This setting applies to NoMachine
# servers not supporting virtual desktops and permits to have one
# single display.
#
# 1: Enabled. NoMachine will create automatically the new display at
# server startup. This setting has to be used in conjunction with
# ‘DisplayOwner’ and ‘DisplayGeometry’.
#
# 0: Disabled. NoMachine will prompt the user for creating the new
# display. This is the default.
#
#CreateDisplay 0

#
# When ‘CreateDisplay’ is enabled, specify the display owner and let
# NoMachine create the new display without querying the user. If the
# server supports only one concurrent connection, the connecting user
# must be the display owner set in this key.
#
#DisplayOwner “”

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