html5 based shared remote keyboard/mouse/screen service

TLDR: Use a webbrowser to access a webbrowser.

Shared remote access is implemented using different backend technologies (vnx, xpra, spice). Inside the container you have a chromium-browser, firefox, atom and evince installed.

In addition to remote access, you can relay your local computer screen to the webservice, using the vnc-relay.sh script on the serverside and a x11vnc and ssh on the client side. In comparison to skype the screen quality should be very good also at high-resolutions.

Quickstart

Setup

1. add ssh public keys of users who should start/control a remote session to authorized_keys
2. deploy container
3. link port 22 of container to an outside port for ssh connection
4. link port 5000 of container to a https web frontend with websocket support (nginx works) (eg. using dokku)

Environment

• REMOTE_VIEWONLY_PASSWORD= "yourviewonlypassword"
  • if "" or "unset" a random password will be created at runtime
• REMOTE_READWRITE_PASSWORD= "yourreadwritepassword"
  • if "" or "unset" a random password will be created at runtime
• REMOTE_AUTOMATIC_VIEW= true
  • if true, write the viewonly password to index.html for autoconnect at runtime
  • if false, the automatic viewonly connect will ask for the password

Usage

vnc: read/write and view access to a browser running in the container

1. ssh user@yourserver.yourdomain -p yoursshport "vnc-client.sh"

• the terminal output shows you the view and the read/write password

1. point your webbrowser to https://yourserver.yourdomain/ to connect readonly or https://yourserver.yourdomain/vnc.html and input password

Experimental

vnc: tunnel a x11vnc from your local computer to a relay on the server side

1. start your browser, get windowid (eg. 0x4000001)
2. x11vnc -display :0 -ncache 10 -forever -shared -viewonly -sid windowid
3. ssh -R localhost:5900:localhost:5900 user@yourserver.yourdomain -p yoursshport "vnc-relay.sh"
4. point your webbrowser to https://yourserver.yourdomain/ to connect readonly or https://yourserver.yourdomain/vnc.html and input password

spice: read/write access to a browser running in the container

• Describe me ( look inside spice-client.sh )

xpra: read/write and view access to a browser running in the container

1. ssh user@yourserver.yourdomain -p yoursshport "~/xpra-client.sh chromium-browser"
2. point your webbrowser to https://yourserver.yourdomain/ to connect readonly or https://yourserver.yourdomain/connect.html and select "readwrite" for keyboard/mouse access

Todo

• WIP: screen-cast.sh

remarks vnc

• Contra: legacy protocol, no audio, no other side channel, limited capabilities
• pro: mature, works, low bandwidth, ok screen quality, html client is not bitrotten or experimental like the others

remarks xpra-html5

• Contra: sharing and read/write viewonly is very experimental
• Pro: Very crispy screen quality, including compositing, low bandwidth, audio

fixme

• read/write also should not trigger resize away from 1024x768 (easy)
• wrong keyboard, should be right or hardcoded to de
• timeouts and reconnect need, why are they, can we fix them, are they only as the presenter or also as viewer ?

remarks xspice

• Pro: versatile (QEMU Server Support, X11 Server Support), Audio, remote USB sharing and other fancy stuff for relaying, very crispy screen quality, smooth screen updates
• Contra: client bitrotten, smooth but slow screen updates, high-bandwith