How to Configure RDP on an Ubuntu 20.04 Instance

The following steps show how to install a Gnome 3 desktop and xrdp on a standard Ubuntu 20.04 instance. This will allow the Ubuntu instance to work with the RDP protocol, and will allow Windows clients to connect to it using the Windows Desktop client.

1) To install xrdp and open the RDP protocol port (port 3389) run the following commands:

# apt update

# apt install gnome-session gdm3 -y

# apt install xrdp -y

# systemctl status xrdp

# adduser xrdp ssl-cert

# iptables -I INPUT 6 -p tcp -m state --state NEW -m tcp --dport 3389 -j ACCEPT; iptables-save

2) Add the following lines to the end of the file /etc/xrdp/startwm.sh