How to fix the linux x2go bug
... that is, how to fix it temporarily
When attempting to log into one of the linux servers with x2go, you might encounter a problem where your session is instantly rejected. The error message might say "Connection failed: session bla bla bla terminated".
The IT Helpful people do not know how to fix this. You can ask the e-beam system administrator to fix your account OR you can fix it yourself, like this:
In the x2go session menu, click on "XFCE" and choose "GNOME" instead.
Before
After
Click on the machine name (freebeam or sizzlorr) and start the x2go session as usual. You will have to wait about three minutes for it to start. If you are presented with a "select session" box
then you should terminate all the old sessions and then click on "New" to start a new one. It happens that GNOME and x2go do not work together at all, and so this new session will fail. But that's ok, because switching environments will clear the problem with XFCE.
In about three minutes you should see a window appear, and then it will disappear. Wait for it! Did you fall asleep? Well then let's assume it worked. Cancel the x2go request, and then go back to the session list to change it from GNOME back to XFCE:
Click on the machine name and log in again.
Note that the error was cleared through the act of using a different environment. There was nothing magical about GNOME; the transition itself cleared the error. If this is such a well-known problem, why don't they fix it? No one knows.
Some explanation:
We use x2go to access the linux servers sizzlorr and freebeam. X2go renders the xwindows desktop and sends a bitmap image to your local computer. On top of xwindows we use a desktop environment called XFCE. The default desktop environment for Red Hat linux is "gnome," which is awful, and does not work at all with x2go. The only choice for the environment is XFCE, but it has this nasty bug which seems to appear when the server reboots while your session is still running. (That's speculation, which might be wrong.) Xfce is less likely to choke if you log out of the server explicitly, using the menu in the upper-right corner. Do not simply close the x2go window.
