Central websockify noVNC relay server?

[Andrew B]

Hi there,

Today I managed to get noVNC working with websockify (on Windows), but is it possible to avoid installing websockify on each VNC host?

The scenario I'm facing is this - we have 150 or so thin clients and computers deployed across our organisation and each has TightVNC installed - this allows us to "shadow" users using the TightVNC desktop app, and provide support.  Currently I am re-writing our web based helpdesk application, and it would be awesome to integrate this with noVNC - so you could shadow a computer without switching to another application.

The issue here obviously, is that we need something in the middle to take those noVNC websocket connections and forward them to the VNC server on each thin client or computer.  Ideally, without installing websockify on each machine.  We could deploy websockify everywhere, but it's a bit of an administrative hassle I'd like to avoid if possible.

So, ideally I would tell noVNC:

• the VNC host I want to connect to
• the relay (websockify) server it should use to get there
• VNC port
• VNC password

Is this at all possible, or am I dreaming an impossible dream?  :)

Thanks,

Andrew

[Kyler Laird]

Andrew, I recently had the same need.  I used websockify-0.5.1 with the --target-config parameter.  Works great.  You'll need to specify something like "noVNC/vnc_auto.html?host=foo&path=%3Ftoken%3D89b762eee8c2" in your noVNC URL.

--kyler

[Solomon Ross]

So, this is actually similar to what we do in Nova (https://github.com/openstack/nova/blob/master/nova/console/websocketproxy.py) for the noVNC proxy.  Basically, the setup in OpenStack has the controller node running the proxy, but the actually VNC "servers" embedded in the hypervisor running on one or more compute nodes.  If you take a look at the file that I linked to above, it should be a good starting point for what you want to do.

[in...@prorender.de]

Hi,

 

can you please explain exactly the steps how you achieved to install websockify on Windows 7. I tried this also but couldn't get it work (error messages fork.py multiprocessing issues etc.). Thanks.

 

Daniel