https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=481912
Bug ID: 481912
Summary: Feature request: Wayland remote login sessions with
Plasma, like xrdp
Classification: Plasma
Product: plasmashell
Version: master
Platform: Other
OS: Linux
Status: REPORTED
Severity: normal
Priority: NOR
Component: Session Management
Assignee: plasma-b...@kde.org
Reporter: matth...@tenstral.net
Target Milestone: 1.0
Hi everyone!
(I was asked to report the feature request here to keep track of it, since it
affects multiple desktop components under Wayland)
I work at a research lab where we have very powerful servers connected to large
data storage via a fast link. A lot of image processing as well as simulations
are run on these machines, and it is incredibly convenient as people can take a
working environment with them, and we also can share an expensive system
extremely efficiently among many scientists.
This is how it is set up currently:
1. The user ssh-tunnels into the server they want to connect to (RDP ports are
not exposed)
2. A RDP connection to xrdp[1] is created
3. xrdp-sesman[2], the session manager module of xrdp, creates a session for
the user after authenticating them
4. Plasma/X11 is started for that user session and renders to the remote
display, instead of an actual display
If a user disconnects, the session is kept running, and they get their session
back as soon as they log in again. To terminate a session, the user has to log
out explicitly.
We are also utilizing Apache Guacamole[3] to make this process even more
convenient so people can avoid installing any additional software and get
almost the same experience as if they were using e.g. Remmina[4] to connect
remotely.
Of course, this complete workflow will not work at all when Plasma is running
on Wayland, and XRDP, as the name suggests, is very X.org-specific (it is a
fantastic tool though and serves us well).
In the long run it would be great if we could switch to Wayland and keep using
Plasma (surprisingly, if stripped down just slightly Plasma is not much heavier
than light desktops, and users like to use the desktop's tools, e.g. the
Dolphin filemanager).
GNOME has a remote login in the works that looks similar to what XRDP provides
and works on Wayland[5], but it would be fantastic if KDE could provide a
similar feature.
Having any XDG portals or interactivity will not work - as soon as the user is
authenticated, they should get a session noninteractively and there should not
be a need to stay logged in for the session to continue to exist (the servers
are headless, and if needed, the admin can always set session resource limits
for users via logind).
A feature like this could for example be implemented by having a system service
that takes incoming RDP connections and uses SDDM to authenticate and spawn a
new Wayland session that can be interacted with using the transient seat
protocol. Or if SDDM is too heavy, some lightweight service to handle the
session authentication part.
In any case, this will require non-trivial work on a lot of components, and
there's likely multiple ways to implement this feature (and it wouldn't even
necessarily have to be RDP-based, but we found the protocol to be a bit more
efficient than VNC in testing).
Thanks to everyone for the phantastic work on Plasma!
Cheers,
Matthias
[1]: https://www.xrdp.org/
[2]: https://manpages.debian.org/testing/xrdp/xrdp-sesman.8.en.html
[3]: https://guacamole.apache.org/
[4]: https://remmina.org/
[5]: https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/Wayland/Remoting#Remote_Login
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