Installing Guacamole on Raspberry Pi

Guacamole is a clientless remote desktop gateway. After successful implementation of this system on some PCs, now I want to use this on a Raspberry Pi 3 B+. Following is how I do the installation on Raspbian system.

OS Version: Raspbian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)
  1. Upgrade the system:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
  1. Install the required dependencies:
$ sudo apt-get install libcairo2-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libjpeg62-turbo-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libpng12-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libossp-uuid-dev
  1. Install the optional packages:
$ sudo apt-get install libavcodec-dev libavutil-dev libswscale-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libpango1.0-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libssh2-1-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libtelnet-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libvncserver-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libpulse-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libssl-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libvorbis-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libwebp-dev
  1. Download Guacamole Server and Client packages:
$ wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/guacamole/files/current/source/guacamole-server-0.9.14.tar.gz
$ wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/guacamole/files/current/source/guacamole-client-0.9.14.tar.gz
  1. Build and install the server:
$ tar xzf guacamole-server-0.9.14.tar.gz
$ cd guacamole-server-0.9.14
$ ./configure --with-init-dir=/etc/init.d
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ sudo update-rc.d guacd defaults
$ sudo ldconfig
  1. Build the client:
$ sudo apt-get install maven
$ tar xzf guacamole-client-0.9.14.tar.gz
$ cd guacamole-client-0.9.14
$ mvn package
  1. Install jetty9 servlet container:
$ sudo apt-get install jetty9
  1. Deploy Guacamole:
$ sudo cp guacamole/target/guacamole-0.9.14.war /var/lib/jetty9/webapps/guacamole.war
$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/guacamole/extensions
$ sudo cp extensions/guacamole-auth-noauth/target/guacamole-auth-noauth-0.9.14.jar /etc/guacamole/extensions/.
  1. Copy following text and save it as “/etc/guacamole/guacamole.properties”
#    Guacamole - Clientless Remote Desktop
#    Copyright (C) 2010  Michael Jumper
#
#    This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
#    it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by
#    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
#    (at your option) any later version.
#
#    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#    GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
#
#    You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
#    along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

# Hostname and port of guacamole proxy
guacd-hostname: localhost
guacd-port:     4822

# Auth provider class (authenticates user/pass combination, needed if using the provided login screen)
auth-provider: net.sourceforge.guacamole.net.basic.BasicFileAuthenticationProvider
basic-user-mapping: /etc/guacamole/user-mapping.xml

# NoAuth properties
noauth-config: /etc/guacamole/noauth-config.xml
  1. Copy following text and save it as “/etc/guacamole/noauth-config.xml”
<configs>
    <config name="pi" protocol="vnc">
        <param name="hostname" value="localhost" />
        <param name="port" value="5900" />
    </config>
</configs>
  1. Copy following text and save it as “/etc/guacamole/user-mapping.xml”. The password is “raspberry”.
<user-mapping>
    <authorize 
    username="pi"
    password="b89749505e144b564adfe3ea8fc394aa"
    encoding="md5">
        <connection name="pi">
        <protocol>vnc</protocol>
        <param name="hostname">localhost</param>
        <param name="port">5900</param>
        <param name="swap-red-blue">false</param>
        <param name="enable-audio">true</param>
        </connection>
    </authorize>
</user-mapping>
  1. Install x11vnc VNC-Server:
$ sudo apt-get install x11vnc
  1. Copy following text and save it as “~/.config/autostart/x11vnc.desktop”
[Desktop Entry]
Name=X11 VNC
Comment=Remotedesktop Server
Exec=x11vnc -forever -nopw -rfbport 5900 -display :0
Terminal=false
Type=Application
X-MATE-Autostart-enabled=true
Comment[de_DE]=Remotedesktop Server
  1. Restart Raspberry Pi:
$ sudo reboot

At this point guacamole should be automatically started at system boot. You can try to open it from a web-browser, the address is “<ip-address>:<port>/guacamole”. On my network it looks like this “192.168.178.100:8080/guacamole”.

In case you use headless system (Raspberry Pi without display attached) and you have poor display resolution, you can set the parameters in “/boot/config.txt” from this:

#framebuffer_width=1280
#framebuffer_height=720

#hdmi_force_hotplug=1

to this (for full HD resolution):

framebuffer_width=1920
framebuffer_height=1080

hdmi_force_hotplug=1

Restart the system and that’s it. Have fun!