I’ve tried on both Ubuntu 24.04 and NixOS and gnome-remote-desktop’s “Remote Login” (=login to GDM) works until Network Manager is disabled.
(“Desktop Sharing” (=seeing my logged-in physical desktop) works fine both with and without Network Manager)
Is there a way for me to use gnome-remote-desktop’s Remote Login without Network Manager?
Details
From a fresh Ubuntu 24.04 in a VM, I enable Remote Desktop → Remote Login under Settings:
Now I can connect from another machine using Remmina and RDP and see the GDM login screen. So far so good.
Now I create /etc/network/interfaces:
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
auto enp1s0
iface enp1s0 inet dhcp
and reboot. (My ethernet interface is called enp1s0.)
It seems Network Manager ignores interfaces in /etc/network/interfaces because after the machine comes back up, interface enp1s0 is no longer controlled by Network Manager, but I can still login over SSH on the interface, and ip -br a still shows it having the same IP address.
And if I now connect from another machine using Remmina and RDP, all I see is a blank screen (I’ve seen white screens on two virtual machines and a black screen on physical hardware).
If I remove /etc/network/interfaces and reboot, gnome-remote-desktop Remote Login works again.
I have the output from sudo journalctl --since 'now' --follow and then connecting from a client with Remmina in both cases: With and without Network Manager, if you’d like to see them.
Why is it that gnome-remote-desktop’s “Remote Login” only works when Network Manager controls the ethernet interface? And is there some way I can get it to work when Network Manager is disabled (or not even present on the system)?