On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 4:01 PM tech101us <[email protected]> wrote: > I've recently been introduced to Guacamole and finding it an amazing > resource > and project for remote access to hosts\desktops in a very functional way. > Kudos to all who contribute to this project...you're awesome. > > Thank you for the kind words :-).
> As I was leveraging the tool in a small environment for testing and > familiarization, I had a thought with respect to the one resource I cannot > access from within Guacamole...hosts that are managed via Web Interfaces. I > realize that with Guacamole, we're already operating in a Web Browser and > therefore accessing Web UI's is a simple operation of entering a URL and > away we go. However, IMHO it would be extremely helpful of Guacamole could > at least provide a resource that could provide shortcuts\links to > frequently > accessed Web URL's. Similar to the current functionality to add a remote > host, yet link would be a web URL that opens a new tab when clicked on. > From > an Administrators standpoint, I just find this would be a value add > function > of the tool. > > I could be off in left field, and please feel free to tell me so. Once > again, thanks to all who contribute to this project. You're all amazing. > > You're not the first one to have requested this functionality - it seems to pop up every few months. However, as a project, we have decided not to implement this. Guacamole is designed to be a remote desktop client, not a general proxy/VPN solution, and we're choosing to focus time and resources on implementing features and protocols and fixing bugs related to remote desktop functionality. The functionality you're asking for is a "dynamic reverse proxy," and there are plenty of those solutions available - I know for sure that Nginx can take a URL as a parameter and proxy that to a back-end server, and I suspect that it is possible to do the same with Apache httpd. Both of these can be protected with LDAP or SSO authentication, so a solution without Guacamole is possible that accomplishes what you're trying to do. So, while Guacamole can provide the remote desktop component of a complete remote access solution, it isn't designed to provide all of the functionality that those systems provide. It's also worth noting that the remote desktop functionality of Guacamole could probably help you accomplish this, though, if you didn't want to go through the trouble of setting up a reverse proxy. You could set up a connection within Guacamole to a remote server - Remote App to Windows, xRDP to Linux, VNC to Linux - and have that session launch a web browser directly/only that could then be used to access web sites behind a firewall. This may not be a perfect drop-in replacement, but it is serviceable and could provide some additional protection, if required (like blocking file downloads, clipboard access, etc.). -Nick
