Session declined: Maximum Number of Sessions Reached

Increase max number of sessions on Linux, no more sessions allowed

Sometimes a host will say no more connections are allowed.

XDMCP fatal error: Session declined Maximum number of open sessions from your host reached

This is usually caused by a router using NAT. The problem is the host thinks the router is a Xserver trying to connect and because several users might be connecting to the host through the router, the host stops allowing the router to open new sessions. The fix for this is to increase the Displays per host on your Linux or UNIX host.

Under Linux, this setting is in the /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf file and the /etc/kde/kdm/kdmrc file. Here’s the part of the file(s) you need to look at:

[xdmcp]
# Distributions: Ship with this off. It is never a safe thing to leave
# out on the net. Alternatively you can set up /etc/hosts.allow and
# /etc/hosts.deny to only allow say local access.
Enable=true
HonorIndirect=true
MaxPending=4
MaxPendingIndirect=4
MaxSessions=16
MaxWait=15
MaxWaitIndirect=15
DisplaysPerHost=2
Port=177
# Willing script, none is shipped and by default we'll send
# hostname system id
Willing=/etc/X11/gdm/Xwilling

Increasing DisplaysPerHost will allow more users to connect before this error happens.

/etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf configures more host connections for Gnome.

/etc/kde/kdm/kdmrc file configures more host connections for KDE.

If there are too many sessions, rebooting the host will fix this problem as well. However, the problem will return once the Displays per host is exceeded again.