I haven’t been happy with any of the themes I have installed on this site since I started it. WordPress sent a notice about the new 2025 default theme and it looks pretty nice, but still is not what I want. I’ve decided to just figure out how to create my own so I’ll stop getting like 70% of the way there only to find that I can’t change what I want to change. I started messing around but it was really annoying trying to test things out and not break the site at the same time. Luckily I still have chrisweber.online so I’ll setup a test site on that. Actually, I’ll probably just copy over the Zion site to it for testing.
I’m hoping if I read through a couple tutorials on how the templates work and get at least something basic completed this week.
Well, that was easy. I literally just copied over the jar file and restarted guacd, apache2, and tomcat9. After that I just logged out and back in to enroll in TOTP.
I did find unfortunately that the KeePass app I’m using on Android doesn’t seem to sync things both ways. Entries I create on my phone do not see to be able to sync to google drive, but that just took me a second to work around. It’s not really a big deal but it meant I had to manually enter in the secret key and such. Guac TOTP supports QR codes, and I was able to add it with my phone, but wasn’t able to get it to sync back to my computer(after five minutes of trying). That may be a project for another day.
I finally decided to bite the bullet and upgrade my laptop to Windows 11 Pro, so that I could use RDP instead of VNC. The primary reason I did this is to make remote access faster. Not only is the RDP protocol much faster than VNC(prob more secure too), but I’ll be connecting to my laptop, which is much newer, with twice the RAM, some sort of i7 processor, and the wifi card seems a bit stronger.
The config was quite simple after I learned to interpret this gobbledygook below:
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382772]: Creating new client for protocol "rdp"
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382772]: guacd[1382772]: INFO: Creating new client for protocol "rdp"
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382772]: guacd[1382772]: INFO: Connection ID is "$7bea9685-1e55-4f4e-b0bf-7fc3f5fd0a5a"
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382772]: Connection ID is "$7bea9685-1e55-4f4e-b0bf-7fc3f5fd0a5a"
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: FreeRDP initialization may fail: The current user's home directory ("/usr/sbin") is not writable, but FreeRDP generally requires a writable home directory for storage of configura>
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: guacd[1382975]: WARNING: FreeRDP initialization may fail: The current user's home directory ("/usr/sbin") is not writable, but FreeRDP generally requires a writable home di>
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: No security mode specified. Defaulting to security mode negotiation with server.
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: guacd[1382975]: INFO: No security mode specified. Defaulting to security mode negotiation with server.
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: guacd[1382975]: INFO: Resize method: none
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: guacd[1382975]: INFO: No clipboard line-ending normalization specified. Defaulting to preserving the format of all line endings.
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: guacd[1382975]: INFO: User "@f96cd9fe-6e30-495b-8b36-dbd32578750f" joined connection "$7bea9685-1e55-4f4e-b0bf-7fc3f5fd0a5a" (1 users now present)
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: Resize method: none
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com tomcat9[1382777]: 19:45:13.459 [http-nio-8080-exec-8] INFO o.a.g.tunnel.TunnelRequestService - User "cweb" connected to connection "RDP on hp360".
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: No clipboard line-ending normalization specified. Defaulting to preserving the format of all line endings.
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: User "@f96cd9fe-6e30-495b-8b36-dbd32578750f" joined connection "$7bea9685-1e55-4f4e-b0bf-7fc3f5fd0a5a" (1 users now present)
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: Loading keymap "base"
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: guacd[1382975]: INFO: Loading keymap "base"
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: guacd[1382975]: INFO: Loading keymap "en-us-qwerty"
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: Loading keymap "en-us-qwerty"
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: Certificate validation failed
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: guacd[1382975]: INFO: Certificate validation failed
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: RDP server closed/refused connection: SSL/TLS connection failed (untrusted/self-signed certificate?)
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: guacd[1382975]: INFO: RDP server closed/refused connection: SSL/TLS connection failed (untrusted/self-signed certificate?)
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: User "@f96cd9fe-6e30-495b-8b36-dbd32578750f" disconnected (0 users remain)
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: guacd[1382975]: INFO: User "@f96cd9fe-6e30-495b-8b36-dbd32578750f" disconnected (0 users remain)
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: guacd[1382975]: INFO: Last user of connection "$7bea9685-1e55-4f4e-b0bf-7fc3f5fd0a5a" disconnected
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382975]: Last user of connection "$7bea9685-1e55-4f4e-b0bf-7fc3f5fd0a5a" disconnected
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com tomcat9[1382777]: 19:45:13.855 [http-nio-8080-exec-3] INFO o.a.g.tunnel.TunnelRequestService - User "cweb" disconnected from connection "RDP on hp360". Duration: 396 milliseconds
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382772]: Connection "$7bea9685-1e55-4f4e-b0bf-7fc3f5fd0a5a" removed.
Oct 01 19:45:13 thecweb.com guacd[1382772]: guacd[1382772]: INFO: Connection "$7bea9685-1e55-4f4e-b0bf-7fc3f5fd0a5a" removed.
The bolded lines are what I needed to figure this out. Really it was quite obvious where that error was coming from once I decided to try to connect from a Windows PC. Seasoned admins should be familiar with the message below:
And it turns out that Guacamole has not way of dealing with this at login. So I added the bolded param to the config file and restarted things and boom goes the dynamite.
Now, I did spend a little bit more time on an error above the one about issues writing to /usr/sbin. A red herring to be sure. Maybe I should have paid more attention to the fact that the error says it maycause issues, not that it will cause issues. After I changed permissions to /usr/sbin/.config so that the Freerdp client could write there, the error persists, but it is still writing config files there, so not sure. I only mention it because it wasted like 30 minutes of my time.
Configuring VNC was pretty trivial. I went with TigerVNC server on my Gaming(it’s named gaming, but is no longer fit for gaming as it’s 10 years old) computer. The setup was trivial. Install, poke holes in firewall, set password, and configure the connection in Guacamole. It doesn’t really perform that bad, but I’m guessing RDP would be better, but I don’t have Windows professional, and this PC is Windows 10 and I’m not going to pay to upgrade now because support for it ends in a little over a year.
I just ran the check for Windows 11 and it’s too old for it, which I assumed but had yet to actually check. I don’t really feel the need to replace this one though, so I’ll probably be switching to Linux for it at some point. My laptop is only a year old so that will be my only Windows system for now.
Guacamole is incredibly configurable and can be unforgiving. After going through the instructions I was curious exactly how long the instructions were so I pretended to print it. 56 pages. Lucky for me I’m just in the testing phase and I found that all I really needed to confirm it works was to create user-mapping.xml in /etc/guacamole.
<user-mapping>
<!-- Per-user authentication and config information -->
<authorize username="cweb" password="<password>">
<connection name="SSH to thecweb.com">
<protocol>ssh</protocol>
<param name="hostname">localhost</param>
<param name="port">22</param>
<param name="username">cweb</param>
<param name="enable-sftp">true</param>
</connection>
</authorize>
</user-mapping>
It took like an hour to get this far. I still need to setup VNC on my one of my Windows systems and go through some steps to secure this colander I call a server. But I’m done for today.
so it looks like all the dependencies installed correctly. make completed without errors so now make install.
sudo make install completed without errors, so I just need to sudo ldconfig to update the system library cache. And add the server to systemd.
cweb@thecweb:/tmp/guacamole-server-1.5.5$ sudo guacd
guacd[24340]: INFO: Guacamole proxy daemon (guacd) version 1.5.5 started
cweb@thecweb:/tmp/guacamole-server-1.5.5$ sudo systemctl enable guacd
Failed to enable unit: Unit file guacd.service does not exist.
Shit. Looks like I didn’t include the option –with-init-dir=/etc/init.d when I ran configure, so we’re going to be repeating a few steps. It’s important to actually read install instructions and not just skim them.
Shit. I want to use systemd not initd. And the instructions don’t say what the option is for that. Rather than guessing we’ll just do this
cweb@thecweb:/tmp/guacamole-server-1.5.5$ cat configure | grep systemd
systemd_dir
with_systemd_dir
--with-systemd-dir=<path>
install systemd units to the given directory
# Check whether --with-systemd_dir was given.
if test ${with_systemd_dir+y}
withval=$with_systemd_dir; systemd_dir=$withval
if test "x${systemd_dir}" != "x"; then
build_systemd="${systemd_dir}"
build_systemd=no
Systemd units: ${build_systemd}
I probably could have guessed that.
Now that I’ve got that redone, I was still getting an error because I gave the path as /etc/systemd instead of /etc/systemd/system, but that was easy to fix. We are now in business.
cweb@thecweb:/tmp/guacamole-server-1.5.5$ sudo mv /etc/systemd/guacd.service /etc/systemd/system/guacd.s
ervice
cweb@thecweb:/tmp/guacamole-server-1.5.5$ sudo systemctl enable guacd
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/guacd.service → /etc/systemd/system/guacd.service.
cweb@thecweb:/tmp/guacamole-server-1.5.5$ sudo systemctl start guacd
cweb@thecweb:/tmp/guacamole-server-1.5.5$ sudo systemctl status guacd
● guacd.service - Guacamole Server
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/guacd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Mon 2024-07-29 20:17:11 UTC; 7s ago
Docs: man:guacd(8)
Main PID: 41937 (guacd)
Tasks: 1 (limit: 9251)
Memory: 10.0M
CPU: 10ms
CGroup: /system.slice/guacd.service
└─41937 /usr/local/sbin/guacd -f
Jul 29 20:17:11 thecweb.com systemd[1]: Started Guacamole Server.
Jul 29 20:17:11 thecweb.com guacd[41937]: Guacamole proxy daemon (guacd) version 1.5.5 started
Jul 29 20:17:11 thecweb.com guacd[41937]: guacd[41937]: INFO: Guacamole proxy daemon (guacd) ver>
Jul 29 20:17:11 thecweb.com guacd[41937]: guacd[41937]: INFO: Listening on host 127.0.0.1, port >
Jul 29 20:17:11 thecweb.com guacd[41937]: Listening on host 127.0.0.1, port 4822
cweb@thecweb:/tmp/guacamole-server-1.5.5$
The guacamole-client files and extensions are just java files that they provide precompiled, so I’m just going to do that. I’m just going to copy over the client without extensions now because I’m not sure which ones I want to use yet.
Yay! It’s working! No, wait. It’s not started, and starting it gives me an error. I messed around with trying to figure out what was wrong for a little while and then just tried Undeploy and then deployed it through the app manager using the link below, and now it’s started.
Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🥳🍾🕺
Now I need to configure it behind a reverse proxy using the instructions here. This isn’t required but it enhances the system security by allowing the applet to run without root, and allows be to access Guacamole over port 443 instead of 8080. Which is good because I don’t need to poke another hole in my firewall and it should also help hide the traffic from big brother while I’m at work.
Step one is to add the bolded lines to the Tomcat server config file at /etc/tomcat9/server.xml. This is to handle non-Latin characters. So I probably don’t really NEED it but that is what the docs say.
In the same file I need to add this stuff so Tomcat can get the remote client’s IP address. Without this it will only see the reverse proxy’s IP. If you’re curious why this is needed there are several paragraphs in the proxy instructions explaining it under the heading “Setting up the Remote IP Valve”.
Now I need to enable the modules to add reverse proxy support in Apache.
cweb@thecweb:/etc/tomcat9$ sudo a2enmod proxy
Enabling module proxy.
To activate the new configuration, you need to run:
systemctl restart apache2
cweb@thecweb:/etc/tomcat9$ sudo a2enmod proxy_http
Considering dependency proxy for proxy_http:
Module proxy already enabled
Enabling module proxy_http.
To activate the new configuration, you need to run:
systemctl restart apache2
cweb@thecweb:/etc/tomcat9$ sudo a2enmod proxy_wstunnel
Considering dependency proxy for proxy_wstunnel:
Module proxy already enabled
Enabling module proxy_wstunnel.
To activate the new configuration, you need to run:
systemctl restart apache2
cweb@thecweb:/etc/tomcat9$ sudo systemctl restart apache2
cweb@thecweb:/etc/tomcat9$
For the site configuration I need to add the below to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/chrisweber.online-le-ssl.conf to tell Apache use the reverse proxy to access Tomcat when the specific URL Location is requested.
<Location /sneakypete/>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
ProxyPass http://127.0.0.1:8080/sneakypete/ flushpackets=on
ProxyPassReverse http://127.0.0.1:8080/sneakypete/
</Location>
<Location /sneakypete/websocket-tunnel>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
ProxyPass ws://127.0.0.1:8080/sneakypete/websocket-tunnel
ProxyPassReverse ws://127.0.0.1:8080/sneakypete//websocket-tunnel
Shit! I’m getting a 404 error when trying to access https://thecweb.com/sneakypete. It’s embarrising how long this took me to fix. Probably half an hour of looking at the Guacamole manuals and the mod_proxy documentation, and then another half an hour of googling with no resolution in site I thought maybe I actually need to create the directory that location is referring to? Yup… I miss understood what the Location directive actually does. I thought it just mapped the URL to the directives without referencing the servers filesystem. Nope. If the directory doesn’t exist, Apache doesn’t even go that far. So a simple “sudo mkdir sneakypete” in the site’s /var/www directory and now I’ve got the login page. Reverse proxy is working!
I think I’m done for the day. If not there will be a 3.5 post after I’ve cleared my head.
Ok, back at it. I’m starting at the dependencies section in the Guacamole manual here. I think I’ll just use this page to build the command to make things easy. I probably already have a bunch of these installed, but apt will sort that out for me. Much quicker than stare and compare. I’m pretty much installing all required and optional dependencies. The optional ones I know I need are for RDP, VNC, and SSH support. I’m not sure if I’ll ever use telenet, session recording, or audio over VNC, but it’s nice to have the option.
And this is what I got. The dependencies have dependencies, which also have dependencies, and those dependencies also have dependencies… I should have just gone with docker, but I’m only working with 100 GB of space, and I need that extra ~1 ms of speed I get from bare metal.
I had to remove like ten packages from the suggested list because apt couldn’t find them. Crap I didn’t need anyway like nvidia and cuda libraires. Wait, did I just fucking install fortran?
Setting up gfortran-11 (11.4.0-1ubuntu1~22.04) ...
Setting up gfortran (4:11.2.0-1ubuntu1) ...
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/gfortran to provide /usr/bin/f95 (f95) in auto mode
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/gfortran to provide /usr/bin/f77 (f77) in auto mode
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.35-0ubuntu3.8) ...
Guess so…
It’s quarter past ten at night and I’m tired and hungry. And if installing packages was this much of a pain then I really don’t want to start compiling Guacamole from source right now. Glancing over what I’ve wrote it really doesn’t look like it took that long, but there was a lot of trial and error figuring out which packages Ubuntu didn’t have. Probably would have been quicker to just add the nvidia repository instead of playing wack-a-mole by removing the packages one by one. But that would have messed up my pure FOSS system with that evil closed source nvidia software.
