Apache Guacamole … What is it about? It’s a client-less remote gateway for Telnet, SSH, RDP and VNC. Client-less, because there is no need to install any plugin or additional software for users (clients). The client will use just the browser (also without any plugin). In this tutorial we will create a very simple environment via Vagrant and use Guacamole. Why the tutorial? Because I know a lot of testers for example – who work with Windows, who are not allowed to install any software (eq Putty) but still need access to environments. … Next point are for example public security groups on cloud providers. Here only one port would be needed to support different protocols on different hosts (incl. file transfer).

What we need?

• VirtualBox installed (latest)
• Vagrant installed (latest)

Project preparation

# create project
$ mkdir -p ~/Projects/Guacamole/src

# change directory
$ cd ~/Projects/Guacamole/

# create needed files in root folder
$ touch {Vagrantfile,ShellProvisioner.sh}

# create needed files in root folder
$ touch ./src/{guacamole.properties,server.xml,user-mapping.xml,Xwrapper.config}

# show project (optional)
$ tree ~/Projects/Guacamole/
|____src
| |____guacamole.properties
| |____server.xml
| |____user-mapping.xml
| |____Xwrapper.config
|____ShellProvisioner.sh
|____Vagrantfile

Okay, via your favorite editor you now add the content of all files. All files inside directory “src” are configuration files (installed on Guacamole host).

# Hostname and port of guacamole proxy
guacd-hostname:      localhost
guacd-port:          4822
available-languages: en, de

auth-provider: net.sourceforge.guacamole.net.basic.BasicFileAuthenticationProvider
basic-user-mapping: /etc/guacamole/user-mapping.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Server port="-1" shutdown="SHUTDOWN">
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.startup.VersionLoggerListener" />
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener" SSLEngine="on" />
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.JreMemoryLeakPreventionListener" />
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.GlobalResourcesLifecycleListener" />
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.ThreadLocalLeakPreventionListener" />
  <GlobalNamingResources>
    <Resource name="UserDatabase" auth="Container"
              type="org.apache.catalina.UserDatabase"
              description="User database that can be updated and saved"
              factory="org.apache.catalina.users.MemoryUserDatabaseFactory"
              pathname="conf/tomcat-users.xml" />
  </GlobalNamingResources>
  <Service name="Catalina">
    <Connector port="55555" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
               connectionTimeout="20000"
               redirectPort="8443" />
    <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost">
      <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm">
        <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm"
               resourceName="UserDatabase"/>
      </Realm>
      <Host name="localhost"  appBase="webapps"
            unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true">
        <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" directory="logs"
               prefix="localhost_access_log" suffix=".txt"
               pattern="%h %l %u %t "%r" %s %b" />
      </Host>
    </Engine>
  </Service>
</Server>

This file (user-mapping.xml) is the configuration for all your connections.

<user-mapping>

  <authorize username="USERNAME" password="PASSWORD">
    <!--
    <connection name="Debian2: RDP Connection">
      <protocol>rdp</protocol>
      <param name="hostname">localhost</param>
      <param name="port">3389</param>
    </connection>
    -->

    <connection name="Debian2: VNC Connection">
      <protocol>vnc</protocol>
      <param name="hostname">localhost</param>
      <param name="port">5901</param>
      <param name="password">vagrant</param>
    </connection>

    <connection name="Debian2: SSH Connection">
      <protocol>ssh</protocol>
      <param name="hostname">localhost</param>
      <param name="port">22</param>
      <param name="username">vagrant</param>
    </connection>

    <connection name="Debian1: SSH Connection">
      <protocol>ssh</protocol>
      <param name="hostname">192.168.10.5</param>
      <param name="port">22</param>
      <param name="username">vagrant</param>
    </connection>

    <connection name="Debian2: Telnet Connection">
      <protocol>telnet</protocol>
      <param name="hostname">localhost</param>
      <param name="port">23</param>
      <param name="username">vagrant</param>
    </connection>
  </authorize>
</user-mapping>

allowed_users=anybody

The ShellProvisioner.sh includes all installation and configuration for Guacamole All examples are provided but for Debian RDP is currently not working and I commented out.

echo '>>>>Install some default packages<<<<<'
sudo apt update -y -q
sudo apt install -y -q build-essential htop libcairo2-dev libjpeg62-turbo-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev libossp-uuid-dev
# install optional guacamole packages eq FFmpeg, SSH
sudo apt install -y -q libavcodec-dev libavutil-dev libswscale-dev libpango1.0-dev libssh2-1-dev libssl-dev libvorbis-dev libwebp-dev

echo '>>>>Install and configure tomcat packages<<<<<'
sudo apt install -y -q tomcat9 tomcat9-admin tomcat9-common tomcat9-user
sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/tomcat9/.guacamole
sudo cp /tmp/guacamole/server.xml /etc/tomcat9/server.xml
sudo chown root:tomcat /etc/tomcat9/server.xml
sudo chmod 0640 /etc/tomcat9/server.xml

echo '>>>>Configure default guacamole directory structure<<<<<'
sudo cp -r /tmp/guacamole /etc/guacamole
sudo mkdir -p /etc/guacamole/{extensions,lib}
sudo chown -R root:root /etc/guacamole
sudo chmod 0640 /etc/guacamole/user-mapping.xml
sudo chown root:tomcat /etc/guacamole/user-mapping.xml
sudo ln -s /etc/guacamole/guacamole.properties /var/lib/tomcat9/.guacamole

echo '>>>>Install and configure telnet packages<<<<<'
sudo apt install -y -q telnetd libtelnet-dev

echo '>>>>Install and configure xrdp packages<<<<<'
# actualy broken becauce of freerdp2-dev on debian
# sudo apt install -y -q xrdp freerdp2-dev
# sudo cp /etc/guacamole/Xwrapper.config /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config
# sudo chown root:root /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config
# sudo chmod 0644 /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config
# sudo systemctl enable xrdp.service
# sudo systemctl enable xrdp-sesman.service
# sudo systemctl start xrdp
# sudo systemctl start xrdp-sesman

echo '>>>>Install and configure vnc packages'
sudo apt install -y -q xfce4 xfce4-goodies gnome-icon-theme tightvncserver libvncserver-dev libpulse-dev

echo '>>>>Install guacamole client and restart tomcat<<<<<'
curl -s -O -J -L "http://apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi?action=download&filename=guacamole/1.0.0/binary/guacamole-1.0.0.war"
sudo cp guacamole-1.0.0.war /var/lib/tomcat9/webapps/guacamole.war
sudo chown tomcat:tomcat /var/lib/tomcat9/webapps/guacamole.war
sudo systemctl restart tomcat9

echo '>>>>Install guacamole server<<<<<'
curl -s -O -J -L "http://apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi?action=download&filename=guacamole/1.0.0/source/guacamole-server-1.0.0.tar.gz"
tar xzf guacamole-server-1.0.0.tar.gz
cd guacamole-server-1.0.0/
# space after etc is wrong
sudo ./configure --with-init-dir=/etc /init.d
sudo make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
sudo update-rc.d guacd defaults

echo '>>>>Start guacamole server/daemon<<<<<'
sudo systemctl start guacd

echo '>>>>Show open ports<<<<<'
sudo lsof -i -P -n | grep LISTEN

echo '>>>>Start clean-up<<<<<'
sudo rm /etc/guacamole/Xwrapper.config
sudo rm /etc/guacamole/server.xml
sudo rm -fr /tmp/guacamole
sudo rm -fr /home/vagrant/guacamole-server-1.0.0s
sudo rm /home/vagrant/guacamole-server-1.0.0.tar.gz
sudo rm /home/vagrant/guacamole-1.0.0.war

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :

BOX_1_NAME = "debian-1-guacamole"
BOX_2_NAME = "debian-2-guacamole"
BOX_BASE = "generic/debian10"
BOX_RAM_MB = 1024
BOX_CPU_COUNT = 1
BOX_GUI = false
BOX_SYNC_DIR = true

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|

  config.vm.define BOX_1_NAME do |deb1|
    deb1.vm.box = BOX_BASE
    deb1.vm.synced_folder ".", "/vagrant", disabled: BOX_SYNC_DIR
    deb1.vm.hostname = BOX_1_NAME
    deb1.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.10.5"
    deb1.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb1|
      vb1.name = BOX_1_NAME
      vb1.cpus = BOX_CPU_COUNT
      vb1.memory = BOX_RAM_MB
      vb1.gui = BOX_GUI
    end
  end

  config.vm.define BOX_2_NAME do |deb2|
    deb2.vm.box = BOX_BASE
    deb2.vm.synced_folder ".", "/vagrant", disabled: BOX_SYNC_DIR
    deb2.vm.hostname = BOX_2_NAME
    deb2.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 55555, host: 55555
    # deb2.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 5901, host: 5901
    # deb2.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 3389, host: 3389
    # deb2.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 23, host: 2323
    deb2.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.10.10"
    deb2.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb2|
      vb2.name = BOX_2_NAME
      vb2.cpus = BOX_CPU_COUNT
      vb2.memory = BOX_RAM_MB
      vb2.gui = BOX_GUI
    end
    deb2.vm.provision "file", source: "./src", destination: "/tmp/guacamole"
    deb2.vm.provision "shell", name: "install", path: "./ShellProvisioner.sh"
  end

end

Usage

First start-up the environment (via simple Vagrant command) and next start the VNC inside the box. You can do via vagrant ssh or you start the VNC via Browser (SSH).

# start environment (be patient)
$ vagrant up

# show status (optional)
$ vagrant status

# ssh into 2nd box
$ vagrant ssh debian-2-guacamole

# start VNC server on user vagrant
$ vncserver

# Password: vagrant
# Verify: vagrant
# Would you like to enter a view-only password (y/n)? n

# exit ssh into box
$ exit

# open browser with URL
$ open http://localhost:55555/guacamole

Now login with “USERNAME/PASSWORD” (see src/user-mapping.xml) on http://localhost:55555/guacamole. If everything works it should look like this:

Please have a look here https://guacamole.apache.org/doc/gug/index.html to learn more about configuration and authentication. All files which we used in this tutorial are available via https://github.com/Lupin3000/GuacamoleExample.