On Sun, Dec 18, 2022 at 10:03 AM hantuo <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> I'm Han-Tuo, a novice at Guacamole. I encountered a configuration issue
> when I tried to set up Guacamole the other day. Any help would be
> appreciated.
>
> I followed this tutorial to setup Guacamole:
> https://kifarunix.com/install-apache-guacamole-on-ubuntu/ . It worked
> smoothly after I completed all steps that this tutorial said. However,
> when I tried to modify guacamole.properties, the deployment result did
> not change.
>
> I rename user-mapping.xml to user-mapping2.xml and modified
> guacamole.properties accordingly. And then restart both tomcat and
> guacd. However, this change did not come into effect. The system still
> loaded user-mapping.xml. The weirdest thing is that the system still
> worked after I deleted guacamole.properties and restart both tomcat and
> guacd.
>
> The following is my environment:
> Ubuntu 20.04
> Guacamole 1.4.0
> Tomcat 9.0.31
>
> Folder structure:
> /etc/guacamole/
>    |- guacamole.properties
>    |- user-mapping2.xml
>    |- guacamole-1.4.0.war
>
> /usr/share/tomcat9/.guacamole/
>    |- guacamole.properties (soft link to
> /etc/guacamole/gracamole.properties)
>
> I'm not sure what is wrong. It seems that guacamole.properties is not
> loaded at all. Any help would be appreciated.
>

The tutorial linked above is incorrect in several areas:

1) Setting GUACAMOLE_HOME to /etc/guacamole is unnecessary. This is the
default.
2) Creating a symbolic link within /usr/share/tomcat9 is unnecessary. Just
use /etc/guacamole. You would only create an alternative configuration
directory within the home directory of the Tomcat user if you want to
override the default (/etc/guacamole). It makes no sense to override the
default with that same default in two different ways.
3) There is no "user-mapping" property. Setting that will have no effect.
There used to be a "basic-user-mapping" property, but that was removed in
1.0.0 (4 years ago). Guacamole will always look for "user-mapping.xml"
within its GUACAMOLE_HOME directory, which defaults to /etc/guacamole.
4) There is no "auth-provider" property. Setting it will have no effect. It
was deprecated in 2015 and removed in 2016.
5) "/etc/guacamole" is not a sensible location for the .war file. Doing
this will not break anything per se, but it's wrong. Files and directories
beneath "/etc" are configuration files, whereas the .war file is an
application binary. It would make more sense to place it in a location like
"/usr/share/guacamole".

Unfortunately, this is only one of several tutorials that all recommend the
same incorrect steps based on configuration methods that haven't applied
for a very long time. You should instead consult the manual, which is
current:

https://guacamole.apache.org/doc/gug/installing-guacamole.html
https://guacamole.apache.org/doc/gug/configuring-guacamole.html

If ever in doubt what configuration files are being loaded by Guacamole,
check your Tomcat logs. Guacamole logs the location of the
guacamole.properties file when it starts up.

- Mike

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