Works very well

[murgero]

This app is working surprisingly well. I currently get hosting from Kimsufi, but with a quick Wireguard VPN setup using a RPi at home and the WG client in the cloud, I can very easily get access to all my home computers without needing to have a VPN client setup on my laptop. And so far, Wireguard is not conflicting with any Cloudron scripts or apps which is a bonus.

[girish]

Yes, I have been putting all my internal servers into a guacamole instance as well and so far so good. The UI has it's quirks and here some tips:

• If you have only one connection configured, it will automatically connect to that connection as soon as you login. I don't know why it's this way. For a long time, I thought it was a bug but one of the developers confirmed that it's a feature.

• You can make connections as sharable but finding the share link itself is complicated. If you are connected, you Ctrl+Alt+Shift (not sure what it is in on the Mac) and it will bring up a pane on the left. It has a Share button on the top. You can hand this out to non-guacamole/cloudron users.

• If RDP connections aren't working, it's because of certificate issues. Just accept self-signed certs (it's a checkbox when creating RDP connection). This took forever to figure.

[murgero]

For Mac users I think this would be Command+Alt+Shift?

[marcusquinn]

@murgero either works on Mac. Ctrl+Alt+Shift or Cmd+Alt+Shift.

Guacamole is very useful for sharing RDP credentials: Ctrl+Alt+Shift > Settings.

As a System Admin, much easier to manage Users & Groups and central DB for these things than the old way of sharing .rdp files on demand with a growing team.

https://www.paperspace.com is decent for reasonably priced Windows Licensed VMs for anyone interested in that, although not researched much beyond them so open to alternative recommendations.

[jdaviescoates]

Could I use this to remotely support my Dad by taking over control of his laptop? (a bit like GoToMyPC?)

I'm guessing perhaps yes, and if so, that'd be awesome! (he's terrible at explaining what problems he's actually having are and saying things like "Google told me to do x" and "Microsoft told me to do x").

[girish]

@jdaviescoates I think so. Surely possible with VNC, not sure about RDP. Can RDP connect to existing logged in user sessions?

[murgero]

@girish The only version of RDP that supports active sessions is Remote Assist, which DOES NOT require third party software and only requires that both parties have UPnP enabled in their modem/firewall.

[odie]

Fantastic application, I agree it works well. Out of curiosity, does anyone know if it’s possible to connect to RealVNC desktops? (Not regular VNC, the RealVNC client/server service)? If so, any suggestions on how to configure Guacamole to connect to such servers?

Thank you very much!

[murgero]

@odie Isn't RealVNC compatible with VNC?

[odie]

@murgero Thanks for following up, apologies for not seeing this sooner.

I don’t really know if they are fully compatible. I started using it a number of years ago since it then was a more secure and faster VNC implementation. It works cross platform by downloading a server application from RealVNC, and then registering an account with them. The free tier allows for 5 desktops/servers. The added benefit from a simplicity point of is that you connect via the client app through their servers, eliminating the need to open standard VNC ports in your firewall.

I never did manage to find out how, and if, it is possible to connect in other ways. That’s why I was hoping someone else knew...

Thank you very much!