XRDP is not using DWM as specified in my .xinitrc file

Question

I'm trying to get RDP access to my X server running ubuntu server 20.04.1 (yes I know normally you wouldn't use X on a server but I have some reasons) I don't want to use all the resources that GNOME uses so I want to change it to DWM but whenever I connect with XRDP it's still using GNOME, even though I created a ~/.xinitrc file with exec dwm in it. When I go to the physical machine with a monitor and run startx, it does use dwm. It's just not using dwm when I connect over XRDP. I've also tried adding exec dwm to my /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc file as well and it still won't work. I've restarted XRDP using sudo systemctl restart xrdp but I may need to be restarting some other service and I'm not sure what. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

I wish I could share how xrdp initializes, a quick search of the expected locations didn't prove helpeful. I resolved this same issue by removing gnome wholesale with

sudo apt remove gnome*

Answer 2

It appears xrdp reads from ~/.Xclients and not ~/.xinitrc

echo "dwm" > ~/.Xclients