Remote Desktop to Raspberry PI 3 - Some keys fail

[apollothethird]

The OS I'm using is:

The Raspberry PI 3 Host:

ubuntu-mate-16.04.2-desktop-armhf-raspberry-pi.img.xz

$ cat /etc/lsb-release 
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=16.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=xenial
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS"

It was downloaded from this site. I used these steps from this site to install and configure the apt:

Remote Desktop from Windows 10 to Ubuntu MATE

xrdp uses the RDP protocol (the same one used on Windows) which under the hood uses the VNC protocol localy to spawn and interact with a X desktop (not the same session as the one logged in locally). There's no SSH involved. It's as secure as the RDP protocol gets (questionable...), X2GO uses SSH and X forwarding - it is much superior if latency isn't an issue, but I don't think there is a server package for PPC. (I would love a server package for the Raspberry Pi) The easiest way is to instal…

I have since spent a number of days researching and trying various configurations to fix the problem. I have two Raspberry PI 3 installations, one with a fresh install and the exact steps. Another with my experiments to try to make it work. If you or anyone have any suggestions on how to make it work, I'll add that to the environment.

At present, it works as expected except that some of the keys fail such as the "ENTER" key an the lower case "L".

The main host machine is:

Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS

I have connected from other computers including Microsoft Windows 7 and Microsoft Windows 10. The behavior is the same. It works as expected except for some of the keys such as the "ENTER" key and the lowercase "l".

I'm trying to use the Raspberry PI 3's GUI desktop without a monitor or keyboard attached to it.

I had already tried the VNC application in the past and was having similar problems. I'll follow the steps you have provided and get back with you on the status of the exact problems. I'll perform it on a fresh ubuntu-mate-16.04.2-desktop-armhf-raspberry-pi.img.xz install to ensure any problems won't be a result of conflict from some of the other fail attempts.

By the way, I have been using the regular VNC server and viewer for many years on a number of Linux distributions. I have just started working with the Raspberry PI.

While I'll be glad if I can get the VNC working, I suggest that you consider taking a look at the rdp/xrdp variation of remote access. It has an advantage of allowing multiple users to simultaneously log in. If you can get that working I'm sure it'll prove to be a great enhancement to your environment. There are other caveats that include remote access time and screen draw exponentially faster.

-- L. James