I’ve got ThinLinc installed on a Ubuntu 24.04 machine, that I will remote into, but also use locally.
For the local sessions, I use GNOME desktop. For remote sessions, I use XFCE always.
If have logged out the local desktop, and have a remote ThinLinc session running, gdm will not allow me to log in again locally. It gives me a dialog (see photo below) that says “Session Already Running”. It gives an option to force stop a running session, but it never works.
I can use Ctrl+Alt+F2 to get a shell on the raw console and manually terminate the ThinLinc session via the CLI.
What I’d really like to do, though, is configure Ubuntu/GDM to allow the local desktop login. Then I can locally connect to the ThinLinc sessions and cleanly manage or use it.
I know it’s possible to have both running at the same time, since I can create a new ThinLinc login while the local GNOME is running, and that works fine (with some minor caveats).
Does anyone have a tip on how to bypass the “Session Already Running” dialog?
Yes, kind of. I just mean I want to log into the local GNOME desktop so I can connect to TL via localhost and log OUT of the ThinLinc session gracefully. But the existence of the TL session causes GDM to stop me from getting to the local desktop.
The scenario is: I would be remoted in via TL doing stuff, and then inadvertently left that session going, maybe with some open windows. Later, when I get to the physical machine with TL server, I’d like to easily log into the GUI locally. Once I’m on, I could then manage the leftover localhost TL session that I left open accidentally, gracefully closing what might be open there, instead of force-killing from a text console.
Understood. Another user had the idea a while back about launching ThinLinc directly from GDM as a single application, rather than starting an entire desktop environment. I haven’t had a chance to test whether this might be a solution or not, but it seems like GDM might intervene regardless of the session type anyway?
If so, the only solution I can think of would be to log in from another device and end the ThinLinc session gracefully. I actually wasn’t aware that GDM is so strict regarding multiple sessions; most of the issues I’ve seen occur with multiple sessions of the same type only. I might have to do some more investigation here.
