User does not exist, or could not be authenticated

[gstoelen]

Hi,

I'm running Debian 13 (running GNOME), and compiled xrdp from source. The service is started, and the server is listening on tcp/3389 so that seems fine. However, each time I try to log in using an RDP client from a remote machine, I'm getting the error "User does not exist, or could not be authenticated".

The log in /var/log/xrdp.log doesn't even show connection attempts. The config file /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini hasn't been altered.
The user xrdp has been added to the ssl-cert group, and the permissions and ownerships on key.pem and cert.pem in /etc/xrdp are fine too I think :
root:root and permissions 644 on cert.pem
root:xrdp and permissions 640 on key.pem

Any ideas.. ?
Thanks!

[matt335672]

Hi @gstoelen

This is possibly significant:-

The log in /var/log/xrdp.log doesn't even show connection attempts.

Connecting to an xrdp server is very 'wordy' and generates a lot of log messages. I'd expect to see a lot of log lines for any connection attempt. If you're not seeing this, it's possible you're connecting to a machine other than the one you're expecting. This is a comment based on personal experience!

Check the IP address on the machine is the same as the IP address as the one you're expecting. Also disable the xrdp server and try to connect again from the remote machine to check that it isn't possible. That's a more thorough check in many ways, as it covers the situation where two machines are configured with the same address. It's something that shouldn't happen, but does.

For permissions on a recent version of xrdp, see this page:-

https://github.com/neutrinolabs/xrdp/wiki/Running-the-xrdp-process-as-non-root

Please come back to us if that's not clear, or you have other questions.