OSC connect is a native windows application written in C# and compiled for .NET 2.0, providing compatibility for Windows versions from XP through Windows 10.
To connect to OSC services, a secure tunnel to a session is required. This can be done relatively simply in OSX and Linux by using the SSH functionality built into the system, but Windows users have had to configure and use third party applications like PuTTY or Java to access secure resources at OSC. OSC Connect provides preconfigured management of secure tunnel connections for Windows users, as well as providing a launcher for secure file transfer, VNC, terminal, and web based services.
When you first run OSC Connect, a temporary folder with four additional files will be added to this folder. These are required for proper functionality of the application. Please ensure that these files are permitted by your IT administrator.
plink.exeis the command-line version of PuTTY and is used by the application to create the secure connection to OSC resources. (version 0.66)putty.exethe GUI application of PuTTY is used to provide terminal emulation remote console connections to OSC resources. (version 0.66)vncviewer.exeis the VNC viewer client used to view a remote desktop session. Currently TurboVNC Viewer 2.0.1.WinSCP.exeOSC Connect includes WinSCP 5.7.6 as the default SFTP client.
No further installation is required. In the current state, OSC Connect is entirely deployed by a single executable file.
The application will have to be run once manually to provide support for launching sessions through the custom URI scheme.
The OSC Connect application can be used to connect to a running session. Sessions are launched through the OSC web dashboard. OSC Connect does not have the ability to launch a new session.
- Entering your credentials reveals file transfer options and allows you to select a Session type.
OSC Connect supports a custom URI scheme that is registered when you launch the application. After the app is run once, just click the link provided in the Session App to launch OSC Connect and populate the configuration information. Then, just click the lightning bolt icon to connect to your session.
The "Copy to clipboard" option is currently disabled by default. If you are having difficulty connecting using one of the OSC URIs, you can open the Advanced Settings menu and enable the "Detect Clipboard Activity" option.
When this option is enabled just copy the URI link to your windows clipboard. The application will detect the code and populate the fields for you. Then, just click the lightning bolt icon to connect to your session.
If your information has been entered correctly, you will be automatically connected to our system. You may see a window open and close briefly, this is the secure tunnel being established.
- If your password was entered incorrectly on the main form, this window will remain open while the system prompts you for a valid password.
- Click the option to create a VNC Tunnel or a COMSOL server session tunnel.
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COMSOL Server: Enter the host name provided by the session manager. A remote port of 2036 will be entered by default.
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VNC Connection: In the session manager of the application you want to connect to, click the blue icon to display additional connection info. Enter the Host, Port, and VNC password as displayed in the image below.
When all of the fields are populated, click the lightning bolt icon to establish the secure tunnel. If your information has been entered correctly, you will be automatically connected to our system. You may see a window open and close briefly, this is the secure tunnel being established.
- If your password was entered incorrectly on the main form, this window will remain open while the system prompts you for a valid password.
The settings menu (indicated by the wrench icon) contains several configuration options to modify the behavior of the application.
Use this dropdown to select the default host. Selecting a server here will change the endpoint for tunneling, sftp connections, console connections, and connectivity checking. ( Default: oakley.osc.edu )
When this option is enabled, the application will detect valid data on the Windows clipboard and populate the application. ( Default: Off )
Several automation functions are available to reduce the amount of interaction required with the OSC Connect application.
When checked, allows the application to remember the user when the application is reopened. This saves the user credentials to the user settings using DPAPI Encryption. Passwords are decrypted only by current the Windows user account. ( Default: Off )
When checked, the tunnel will automatically connect when the application detects a valid clipboard string and the user credentials have been entered. ( Default: On )
When checked, the application will automatically launch a browser or vnc session when the tunnel is detected.
The OSC Connect application will use the embedded client to allow you to connect to securely connect to the OSC file system over SFTP.
OSC Connect now uses WinSCP as the default SFTP client.
- WinSCP is the embedded SFTP client. The OSC Connect application will deploy and run a WinSCP process.
Be sure to launch OSCConnect.exe at least once. The initial launch will add a key to your user registry that initializes the URI scheme.
If you move or rename the OSCConnect.exe file, you will need to open the application again manually to update the path in the handler.
I've received the error "Unable to open helper application. The protocol specified in this address is not valid."
This issue appears in some earlier versions of Internet Explorer when attempting to launch the application from a Temporary location. Download and run the OSCConnect.exe application, being sure to click "Save As" or "Save" in your browser to save the file to a non-temporary location.
- OSC Connect is built to comply with the Microsoft .NET runtime 2.0. 2.0 is considered "pure" .NET and the compiled binaries should function without additional dependencies on Windows XP/7/8/8.1/10.
- OSC Connect is developed using primarily the C# language.
- Download and install Visual Studio Community 2017
- Install for "Universal Windows Platform Development"
- Enable the .NET Framework 2.0 in Windows.
- Press the Windows key Windows on your keyboard, type "Windows Features", and press Enter. The Turn Windows features on or off dialog box appears.
- Select the .NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0) check box, select OK, and reboot your computer if prompted.
- Visual Studio includes team support, you can use this feature to clone the
osc-connectrepository from GitHub. If you are accustomed to command-line git, download and install Git for Windows to gain access to Git Bash. git clonethe OSC Connect repository to your system.- Open the project in Visual Studio by clicking File > Open > Project/Solution and selecting OSCConnect.sln in the file dialog. You can also load the project in Visual Studio by double-clicking the OSCConnect.sln file in the Windows Explorer.
- In the Visual Studio IDE, Download the required dependencies using the NuGet Package Manager
- Tools > NuGet Package Manager > Manage NuGet Packages for Solution...
- The NuGet Manager will provide a notice that some of the required dependencies are missing. Click the Restore button to automatically download these packages.
- Click the button with the green arrow and the word "Start" to build and run the solution.
- Select Debug and Any CPU while testing to enable breakpoints and performance monitoring during development.
- Select Release and Any CPU to compile a binary for deployment. Compiling for release removes the development tools and provides additional compilation optimizations for a release build.
- When deploying, attach a copy of the release-compiled
OSCConnect.exebinary (Solution Folder/bin/Release/OSCConnect.exe) to the GitHub release notification.
- OSC Connect can manage custom branding. To add new branding, create a new Class extending the Brand interface. Modify the BrandFactory constructor in initialize the brand as approprate. In the current implementation, the brand is based on the filename of the executing application. A file that includes the word "awesim" (case insensitive) will display the AweSim branding, otherwise it will default to OSC branding.
As of version 0.92, OSC Connect relies upon Github for hosting binaries and version information. The app will make a request to the GitHub API to obtain the latest tagged release.
If the released version on github is newer than the existing version, the app displays a link to the latest version of the application.
OSC Connect has custom URI support. Run the application once to enable this feature. Clicking an AweSim or OSC URI provided by the web session manager will activate and populate the application with connection data.
Examples of valid patterns:
- VNC:
osc://<UserName>:<VNCPassword>@<PUAServer><RemoteHost> - VNC (no user):
osc://:<VNCPassword>@<PUAServer><RemoteHost> - COMSOL:
osc://<UserName>@<PUAServer><RemoteHost> - COMSOL (no user):
osc://<PUAServer>:<RemoteHost> - SFTP:
osc://sftp@<RemotePath> - VNC:
awesim://<UserName>:<VNCPassword>@<PUAServer><RemoteHost> - VNC (no user):
awesim://:<VNCPassword>@<PUAServer><RemoteHost> - COMSOL:
awesim://<UserName>@<PUAServer><RemoteHost> - COMSOL (no user):
awesim://<PUAServer>:<RemoteHost> - SFTP:
awesim://sftp@<RemotePath>
OSC Connect accepts command line arguments in the patterns:
OSCConnect.exe <UserName>:<VNCPassword>@<PUAServer>:<RemotePort>OSCConnect.exe :<VNCPassword>@<PUAServer>:<RemotePort>OSCConnect.exe <UserName>@<PUAServer>:<RemotePort>OSCConnect.exe <PUAServer>:<RemotePort>OSCConnect.exe sftp@<RemotePath>
The application can detect when a properly formatted string is copied to the Windows clipboard and it will automatically parse the input data. In this version, the application can expect 4 inputs. The inputs are case-sensitive.
- U, or UserName - The OSC username credential. (ex: an0018)
- H, or PUAServer - The host name of the running session. (ex: n0580.ten.osc.edu')
- R, or RemotePort - The remote port for the tunnel connection. The application will attempt to set the local port to the same port as the remote port, but if the local port is already in use it will select the next available port. (ex: 5901)
- V, or VNCPassword - An 8-char password generated by the VNC server. (ex: VaK55uol)
Examples of valid json strings:
{'H':'n0580.ten.osc.edu','R': '5901','U':'an0018','V':'Yh8d89tf'}{'RemotePort':'5901','VNCPassword': 'ty56u3J7','PUAServer':'r0004.ten.osc.edu','UserName': 'bmcmichael'}