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Apache Guacamole 1.1.0

guacamole.apache.org

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Re: Apache Guacamole 1.1.0

#41

Post by fuzzy2 »

w0utert wrote: post #35
fuzzy2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recommendation: Use Docker. No need to deal with all the gritty details. If needed, reverse-proxy it. Guacamole is (in my experience) unfortunately rather inefficient concerning bandwidth. You can’t compare it to Steam Link either, because that’s using H264 video compression. Guacamole does not use video compression. A single 5K 24 bit bitmap is ~42 MiB. That’s a lot, even compressed and especially at reasonable f…

>> You can’t compare it to Steam Link either, because that’s using H264 video compression. Guacamole does not use video compression. This part I don't really understand. Why does a client guacamole VNC connection be less inefficient in terms of bandwidth compared to a direct client VNC connection? And if the general idea of sending screen data to a client be much more efficient if you use something like H264, why doe…

> Why does a client guacamole VNC connection be less inefficient in terms of bandwidth compared to a direct client VNC connection?

Because it’s not using the VNC protocol. It’s the Guacamole protocol. It is more restricted compared to modern VNC compression variants.

> I used NX for a while, and that does something very similar. On a slow connection you can actually see the compression artefacts when scrolling. It's not pretty, but at least it makes the machine accessible.

NoMachine NX is a different beast altogether. It’s comparable to RDP in that it deals directly with the actual (X11) objects instead of (just) their on-screen rendering. It’s basically advanced compression over X11 forwarding over SSH.

---

The point is HTML5. It works everywhere you have a somewhat reasonable browser.

Re: Apache Guacamole 1.1.0

#42

Post by xienze »

w0utert wrote: post #21

I really like the idea implemented by Apache Guacamole, but when I tried to install it on my home server get remote desktops to my other machines when abroad, it was a huge letdown. First of all the installation process is terrible, you need to install and configure a whole working tomcat8 server first and manually deploy the application WAR, configuration is non-obvious and obtuse, and the first ~10 tries after depl…

> Second, when I finally managed to get Guacamole to establish a VNC connection to an OS X client, the performance was straight up horrible.

Well, there’s your problem: Mac VNC. In order to get “OK” VNC performance on a Mac you have to:

* Make sure a display is connected to it (either real or a display emulator dongle)

* Use the built in Mac VNC server

* Use a VNC client like Remotix that has support for the VNC extensions that Apple uses to boost performance

In other words, use something else, like NoMachine (or similar) which does h264 compression.

Re: Apache Guacamole 1.1.0

#43

Post by tootie »

ldoughty wrote: post #30
fuzzy2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recommendation: Use Docker. No need to deal with all the gritty details. If needed, reverse-proxy it. Guacamole is (in my experience) unfortunately rather inefficient concerning bandwidth. You can’t compare it to Steam Link either, because that’s using H264 video compression. Guacamole does not use video compression. A single 5K 24 bit bitmap is ~42 MiB. That’s a lot, even compressed and especially at reasonable f…

I second using containers for guacamole. Also agree, this isn't intended to be a replacement for direct access, nor for streaming purposes. This gives you and RDP session with no software install needed. The use case of guacamole is accessing a system from anywhere without needing your ssh keys, RDP, or VNC software. If you're happy doing any of those directly, adding a middle man doesn't add any value. That said, if…

Yeah, this is a neat tool, but I'm wondering what actual use case this is fulfilling. Installing an RDP or VNC client isn't a huge effort. If you're enterprise, you're probably already paying for TeamViewer or something similar. The biggest issue is usually the handshake between a client and machine on a private LAN.

Re: Apache Guacamole 1.1.0

#44

Post by jsgo »

ubercow13 wrote: post #38
w0utert wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> You can’t compare it to Steam Link either, because that’s using H264 video compression. Guacamole does not use video compression. This part I don't really understand. Why does a client guacamole VNC connection be less inefficient in terms of bandwidth compared to a direct client VNC connection? And if the general idea of sending screen data to a client be much more efficient if you use something like H264, why doe…

Compressing the H264 requires quite a bit more processor power on the server. It's fine for steam link because the use case usually involves a powerful gaming PC on the server end, often with a dedicated GPU video encoder.

Is there a similar system to Guacamole that does involve encoding?

I was actually looking at this a few days ago because I've been very interested in implementing something like Google's Project Stream locally where I can render things in the browser, but frame rate is important for me.

Re: Apache Guacamole 1.1.0

#45

Post by v4n4d1s »

w0utert wrote: post #36
ldoughty wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second using containers for guacamole. Also agree, this isn't intended to be a replacement for direct access, nor for streaming purposes. This gives you and RDP session with no software install needed. The use case of guacamole is accessing a system from anywhere without needing your ssh keys, RDP, or VNC software. If you're happy doing any of those directly, adding a middle man doesn't add any value. That said, if…

>> This gives you and RDP session with no software install needed. The use case of guacamole is accessing a system from anywhere without needing your ssh keys, RDP, or VNC software. If you're happy doing any of those directly, adding a middle man doesn't add any value. The point is that I'm not happy to do this directly, for various reasons. I don't want to open up any ports that get forwarded to my LAN for remote de…

Try Xrdp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xrdp

I use it on a bunch of Ubuntu 18.04 systems, works out of the box with apache guacamole.

Re: Apache Guacamole 1.1.0

#46

Post by bjonnh »

Using it in production here since a few versions. It works perfectly for RDP (VMs that several non computer saavy people have to use including when abroad) and LDAP (slapd) for auth. Performance is really good even for tens of connections at the same time and the users are using old apps that tend to refresh half the screen each time a single pixel changes . Works on Linux, Mac and windows for the clients without having to give specific instructions for each. I used the docker containers for deployment to reduce the hassle As it is running on a VM anyway, I will switch that to ansible playbooks at some point, but the docker install was really smooth, I'm almost wondering if it is worth it.

Re: Apache Guacamole 1.1.0

#47

Post by ridruejo »

w0utert wrote: post #21

I really like the idea implemented by Apache Guacamole, but when I tried to install it on my home server get remote desktops to my other machines when abroad, it was a huge letdown. First of all the installation process is terrible, you need to install and configure a whole working tomcat8 server first and manually deploy the application WAR, configuration is non-obvious and obtuse, and the first ~10 tries after depl…

Have you tried Bitnami VMs and cloud images? https://bitnami.com/stack/guacamole

Re: Apache Guacamole 1.1.0

#48

Post by patentatt »

catmanjan wrote: post #16

I've looked at using this before to provide a "thin client" legacy desktop app - is anyone doing the same with Guacamole? Care to share your experience?

If I’m understanding you correctly, I used guacamole for just this purpose once. Terrible legacy desktop app needed to be ‘ported’ to ‘the cloud’ ASAP because reasons. While we were working on a proper rewrite, I stood up a VM running the old desktop software and a web page that used guacamole to VNC to the app. Worked fabtabulously, and with a little printer redirection and UI tweaks, wound up being preferred by the users over the rewritten proper web app. In all honesty, not a terrible solution. Users who had been using the app for a decade didn’t have to learn anything new. I did have to learn something new, though, as then we had to port our new features from the real web app back to the VB6 legacy ‘desktop’ app, lol.

Re: Apache Guacamole 1.1.0

#49

Post by wayoutthere »

tootie wrote: post #43
ldoughty wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second using containers for guacamole. Also agree, this isn't intended to be a replacement for direct access, nor for streaming purposes. This gives you and RDP session with no software install needed. The use case of guacamole is accessing a system from anywhere without needing your ssh keys, RDP, or VNC software. If you're happy doing any of those directly, adding a middle man doesn't add any value. That said, if…

Yeah, this is a neat tool, but I'm wondering what actual use case this is fulfilling. Installing an RDP or VNC client isn't a huge effort. If you're enterprise, you're probably already paying for TeamViewer or something similar. The biggest issue is usually the handshake between a client and machine on a private LAN.

Most ASF projects are not what I would call end-user tools; they're a collection of enabling technologies under an open source license so that they can be integrated in a modular way into a wide range of other products that an end-user would interact with. For better or worse, this seems to be the way that open source is being funded and used by the industry these days.

Re: Apache Guacamole 1.1.0

#50

Post by F00Fbug »

I hope this project has matured since I last tried it (18 months ago).

As wOutert mentioned, the installation process is difficult and not for the faint of heart. Sure, most folks reading this here could manage it, but we're not normal!

I really wanted this to work since I'm teaching at a school where all the Windows machines are locked down. I teach a Linux class. I teach a bunch of cyber-security classes and often need to install tools for this. Our IT administrators either refuse to let me install the software I need to teach or put up a huge stink.

I stood up a few VMs in my homelab for teaching and was hopeful that I could remote in painlessly. After much weeping and gnashing of teeth I finally got it working. And it worked well. About once a month I do a "yum update" on my CentOS machines and when it ran on this particular machine, it broke something in the Guac stack. I refused to spend the time to fix it!

Simultaneously, I'd been having trouble with TeamViewer. The unfortunate reality of any IT professional's life is that you end up doing IT support for the family. TeamViewer was fine for years, but they started flagging my use as commercial. After looking and testing I found AnyDesk; it works every bit as well as TeamViewer and it has a Windows portable client; you don't need to install anything on the client machine (no admin rights needed).

So now I either boot my machines from a USB stick with Linux or AnyDesk to where I need to go and my life is much better.

When Guacamole is mature and painless like AnyDesk, I'd give it another look.

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