When the same user tries to create an additional GNOME 3 virtual desktop on SLES 12 , he/she gets the following message:

"Error is 54:  The connection with the server was lost."

This happens because the system starts the new GNOME 3 desktop without re-initializing some environment variables which were already set for the previous desktop session created for the same user.

A possible solution is to wrap the gnome-session startup script in order to re-define such problematic variables.

This article applies to NoMachine 4 or later.

The following instructions have to be executed from a console.

1. Rename the original gnome-session startup script

    sudo mv /usr/bin/gnome-session /usr/bin/gnome-session-wrapped

2. Create a new gnome-session file

    sudo touch /usr/bin/gnome-session

3. Set proper permissions

    sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/gnome-session

4. Edit the /usr/bin/gnome-session file to have:

#!/bin/bash

unset SESSION_MANAGER
unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
export SESSION_MANAGER
export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS

exec "/usr/bin/gnome-session-wrapped" "$@"