I have been using Thinlinc successfully in a specific server machine for a while now. However, today when I tried to log-in to the server, while the client did connect, the desktop from the server seems frozen. It is unclear to me whether this is a Thinlinc session freeze, or a graphical desktop freeze.
Both the server and the client computers run on Ubuntu. I can normally connect to the machine via ssh. My questions:
- what can I do via ssh to try to diagnose whether this is a Thinlinc session issue or a graphical desktop being hand?
- if this is an OS graphical desktop hanging, is there a way to re-start the graphical desktop without effectively killing the Thinlinc session? That is, without loosing access to graphical programs that were being worked on?
Thanks!
Hi @Lucy_Z,
Is this happening intermittently, or every time? Is it just the one, already existing session? Or does it also happen with newly created sessions?
It might be worth SSHing into the server, and checking CPU load using top. If CPU is pegged high, checking which process is consuming all the CPU time might help diagnose the issue.
If it’s not CPU, have you tried checking the ThinLinc session log file? This can be found at the following location:
/var/opt/thinlinc/sessions/<username>/last/xinit.log
Hi, thanks for your answer. No, not every time. It is the only existing session, yes. I SSHed into the server and checked the CPU usage. Nothing noticeable.
Here is the last entry in the Thinlinc sesssion log after I tried connecting via client:
Thu May 7 16:39:04 2026
VNCSConnST: Closing (manually redacted): Clean disconnection
EncodeManager: Framebuffer updates: 69
EncodeManager: Tight:
EncodeManager: Solid: 749 rects, 28.8038 Mpixels
EncodeManager: 11.7031 KiB (1:9614.83 ratio)
EncodeManager: Bitmap RLE: 13 rects, 40.102 kpixels
EncodeManager: 471 B (1:340.9 ratio)
EncodeManager: Indexed RLE: 317 rects, 467.678 kpixels
EncodeManager: 47.5986 KiB (1:38.4587 ratio)
EncodeManager: Tight (JPEG):
EncodeManager: Full Colour: 565 rects, 4.61528 Mpixels
EncodeManager: 4.59711 MiB (1:3.83118 ratio)
EncodeManager: Total: 1.644 krects, 33.9268 Mpixels
EncodeManager: 4.65547 MiB (1:27.8037 ratio)
Connections: Closed: (manually redacted)
E: [tunnel-source] module-tunnel-source-new.c: Stream failed: Connection terminated
E: [tunnel-sink] module-tunnel-sink-new.c: Stream failed.
Note: I can see the frozen image of the server session but not interact with it. Hitting F8 does bring up the Thinlinc menu normally and I can then disconnect.
It’s likely that these last two error messages have something to do with the frozen desktop session. However, these have nothing to do with ThinLinc per se, so it’s difficult to know what might have caused it. However, they do seem to be audio-related, so if you don’t require audio then it might pay to disable it in the client settings.
Is killing the session and starting a new one an option here?