Bug#1111077: gnome-remote-desktop: user-defined password is lost after reboot

[Simon McVittie]

Control: retitle -1 gnome-remote-desktop: user-defined password is lost after reboot
Control: severity -1 important
Control: tags -1 + moreinfo unreproducible

I cannot reproduce the symptom that you describe.

On Thu, 14 Aug 2025 at 15:09:18 +0100, Phil Wyett wrote:
>* Set user defined password

I tried to reproduce this as follows:

* start from a correctly working Debian 13 GNOME virtual machine
* be logged in to a GNOME GUI session as a test user (in my case it's
   named "user")
* gnome-control-center ("Settings")
* -> System panel
* -> Remote Desktop button
* -> Desktop Sharing tab
* Desktop Sharing: toggle to ON
* Remote Control: toggle to ON
* How to Connect shows "Hostname: d13gnome", "Port: 3389"
* Login Details
* Username: I left it at the default "user", the Unix login name of my
   test user
* Password: changed to "password123"

These steps resulted in these changes to the output of `dconf dump /`:

     --- before.txt	2025-09-06 17:42:18.473323780 +0100
     +++ after.txt	2025-09-06 17:46:15.690449650 +0100
     @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
      [org/gnome/control-center]
     -last-panel='applications'
     +last-panel='system'
      window-state=(980, 640, false)
     
      [org/gnome/desktop/app-folders]
     @@ -34,6 +34,12 @@
      [org/gnome/desktop/notifications/application/org-gnome-software]
      application-id='org.gnome.Software.desktop'
     
     +[org/gnome/desktop/remote-desktop/rdp]
     +enable=true
     +tls-cert='/home/user/.local/share/gnome-remote-desktop/certificates/rdp-tls.crt'
     +tls-key='/home/user/.local/share/gnome-remote-desktop/certificates/rdp-tls.key'
     +view-only=false

Additionally, in seahorse ("Passwords and Keys"), these steps resulted 
in my "Login" keyring containing a new item, with the Description set to 
"GNOME Remote Desktop RDP Credentials", and the Password set to:

     {'username': <'user'>, 'password': <'password123'>}

Then on the VM host system, I ran

     gnome-connections rdp://192.168.122.134

to connect. I was prompted to verify the VM's TLS cert fingerprint, then 
asked to authenticate. I logged in as 'user' with password 'password123' 
and gained control over the VM.

Next I rebooted the VM and logged back in to the GNOME desktop session.

Then on the VM host system, I ran

     gnome-connections rdp://192.168.122.134

to connect again. I authenticated with the same username and password, 
successfully, and again I had control over the VM.

Are those the steps you followed? If not, how did your steps differ?

Now that I know that gnome-remote-desktop stores the user-defined 
username/password in gnome-keyring, I suspect that the most likely cause 
for the symptom you describe is that your gnome-keyring login keyring is 
not getting unlocked when you log in - possibly due to a mismatch between 
your test system's Unix password, and the password used to encrypt the 
login keyring.

Or, perhaps there is some other problem with gnome-keyring on your test 
system, like the keyring being corrupted or deleted, or the "GNOME 
Remote Desktop RDP Credentials" item not being stored.

Please check the systemd Journal for any relevant error messages, or use 
a package like libsecret-tools, seahorse or 
https://gitlab.com/GrantMoyer/lssecret to investigate what is happening 
in your system's gnome-keyring.

On my test VM, when the keyring was not locked (i.e. while I was logged 
in to the GUI session on the console), I was able to run this and it 
retrieved the gnome-remote-desktop password:

$ secret-tool search --all xdg:schema org.gnome.RemoteDesktop.RdpCredentials
[/1]
label = GNOME Remote Desktop RDP credentials
secret = {'username': <'user'>, 'password': <'password123'>}
created = 2025-06-11 10:17:17
modified = 2025-09-06 16:45:53
schema = org.gnome.RemoteDesktop.RdpCredentials

     smcv