Xorg fails when non-xrdp xorg.conf files are present

[te36de]

xrdp version

0.9.23.1 (but checked also latest gith repo)

Detailed xrdp version, build options

irrelevant

Operating system & version

Gentoo (installation based on https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Xrdp)

Installation method

Doesn't matter

Which backend do you use?

x11-base/xorg-server-21.1.18

What desktop environment do you use?

irrelevant

Environment xrdp running on

physical machine with NVidia graphics card

What's your client?

Microsoft client running on Macbook

Area(s) with issue?

Other

Steps to reproduce

System has physical NVidia and AST (IPMI) graphics card for which /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/*.conf config files exist. Especially the nvidia config file confuses the xrdp started Xorg. It causes the NVidia driver to be loaded, which then makes Xorg fail:

.xorgxrdp.10.log:

[ 63748.250] (II) NVIDIA dlloader X Driver  580.82.09  Fri Aug 29 17:13:41 UTC 2025
[ 63748.250] (II) NVIDIA Unified Driver for all Supported NVIDIA GPUs
[ 63748.250] rdpIdentify:
[ 63748.250] (II) XRDPDEV: driver for xrdp: XRDPDEV
[ 63748.250] rdpDriverFunc: op 10
[ 63748.250] (EE)
Fatal server error:
[ 63748.250] (EE) parse_vt_settings: Cannot open /dev/tty0 (Permission denied)
[ 63748.250] (EE)
[ 63748.250] (EE)

Reproduce

Xorg is started as defined by default xrdp config files as follows from user home directory:

Xorg :10 -auth .Xauthority -config xrdp/xorg.conf -noreset -nolisten tcp -logfile .xorgxrdp.%s.log

Analysis

.xorgxrdp.10.log

[ 63748.243] (++) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xrdp/xorg.conf"
[ 63748.243] (==) Using config directory: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d"
[ 63748.243] (==) Using system config directory "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d"

Xorg still opens xorg.conf.d and reads config files from it. Those make Xorg fail.

✔️ Expected Behavior

No response

❌ Actual Behavior

No response

Anything else?

Suggested Solution

diff sesman.ini.orig sesman.ini

118,119c118,120
< param=-config
< param=xrdp/xorg.conf
---
> param=-configdir
> param=xrdp
> #

Changing the Xorg parameter from "-config xrdp/corg.conf" to "-configdir xrdp" stops Xorg from reading config files from /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d and makes it read them only from /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d. It will hence read xorg.conf - as well as possibly other config files xrdp setup wants to create there.

[ 2432.983] (++) Using config directory: "/etc/X11/xrdp"
[ 2432.983] (==) Using system config directory "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d"

[matt335672]

Thanks @te36de

This has been noted before - see #2556

At the time I asked for comments on the change and received none so it dropped off the radar. It's a problem that only appears to affect a few distros, as most seem to use auto-GPU detect, which is easily disabled.

@metalefty - I think the best way to address this would be to make the change to devel and see how it affects users running that. What do you think?

[te36de]

Thanks, @matt335672
When i wrote this issue, i indeed was using the dilfridge repo versions of xrdp (0.9.23.1) which had an old xorg.conf in which there was no ServerFlags section that disabled auto-adding of devices.

In the meantime, i've done local ebuilds so i could install 0.10.4, and the ServerFlags section does indeed seem to solve the problem i described here too - but i am not sure if it would do it in all situations. After all, the configs from /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/*.conf are still read and acted upon and only device adding is suppressed. But right now i don't have a hard example what could fail. But still only half way through my setup, maybe i'll find something more ;-)