Guacamole - Remote App Only?

[FN-GM]

Hello,

 

I am looking at setting up Guacamole as a temporary measure until HTML 5 comes to Microsoft RDP.

 

Is it possible to deliver just the apps in a cut out Window or does it have to be the whole RDP session?

 

Reason I ask is i want it to delivery some legacy apps to ChromeOS until everything goes web based (looking at you SIMS!). I don't want them to use the ChromeOS system as a ThinClient and do everything in the Windows session.

 

Thanks

Edited October 1, 2017 by FN-GM

[Steve21]

You should be able to just link it to a remoteapp link rather than full RDS, or did you mean without MS stuff at all?

 

Any reason you don't use the normal MS app for RDP though? Pretty sure the Android/Chromy one supports RemoteApps by standard doesn't it? Or did they remove that

 

Steve

[FN-GM]

Thanks, so I should just be able to deliver the cut out Window of the app via Guacamole and not have the Taskbar etc?

 

There isn't a MS RDP app for ChromeOS. There is an Android app, however not all ChromeOS devices can run Android apps. The ones that do allow you to run Android apps are not great as the limited resolution options in the app means we can't use the full screen

Edited October 1, 2017 by FN-GM

[Steve21]

Just the normal RemoteApp style setup yep, So you'll effectively get a window version on your normal OS normally, but obviously with using Guac it'll look different as it'll just be a window within the browser etc.

 

RemoteApp

 

Recent versions of Windows provide a feature called RemoteApp which allows individual applications to be used over RDP, without providing access to the full desktop environment. If your RDP server has this feature enabled and configured, you can configure Guacamole connections to use those individual applications.

 

remote-app

Specifies the RemoteApp to start on the remote desktop. If supported by your remote desktop server, this application, and only this application, will be visible to the user.

 

Windows requires a special notation for the names of remote applications. The names of remote applications must be prefixed with two vertical bars. For example, if you have created a remote application on your server for notepad.exe and have assigned it the name "notepad", you would set this parameter to: "||notepad".

 

remote-app-dir

The working directory, if any, for the remote application. This parameter has no effect if RemoteApp is not in use.

 

remote-app-args

The command-line arguments, if any, for the remote application. This parameter has no effect if RemoteApp is not in use.

 

Not tried it recently as gave up on the Guac setup tbh But should still work fine.

 

Steve

[FN-GM]

Thanks, Just wanted to check on this before I invested time into the project.

[Steve21]

The main reasons I went away from it in the end was hassle with the double logins required for RemoteApps. As didn't ever find out a way to make it pass the auth from the gateway/app server to the actual RDS server so it'd always require 2 logins. While the normal MS ones didn't

 

Steve

[FN-GM]

@Steve21 sorry to be a pain. Do you know if it possible to publish apps based on AD group please? Or does it respect the settings in RDS please?

 

Thanks

[Steve21]

You can do LDAP lookup via an extension (Unless they added it into the main program since I used it), then you just map that as part of the user mapping xml etc.

 

But I'm not sure how restrictive it is as it was just a simple "Staff" group we did, wasn't like "XYZ has this, ABC has that".

 

Personally I think you'll find it's more hassle than needed trying to use it for SIMs etc though, as if they're doing reports etc they'll need access to Word/Excel for report outputs etc anyway which wouldn't show properly unless using the full desktop (RDP wise), and then things like Alert buttons etc would stop working too for on-call blahblah or is it just like teachers using it this way and admin would still use fatclients?

 

Steve

[krudler]

It's possible to pass through the authentication details from guacamole using the guacamole variables in the username and password fields.

For username it's ${GUAC_USERNAME} and for password it's ${GUAC_PASSWORD} .

 

Of course this assumes that you have the LDAP extension etc setup correctly with ldap-username-attribute: sAMAccountName​ in your guacamole.properties file etc.

 

 

To be able to use SIMS, under the RemoteApp section in the connection settings, you'll want to put ||pulsar in the Program field (you may need to put C:\Program Files (x86)\SIMS\SIMS .net in the Working directory field but I didn't do this and it works - possibly because I have the app published via RDWeb also).

 

I have trialed generating reports which opens excel/word fine but of course it is in the instance running in the remote session. The only problem I've had so far is printing as the guacamole redirected printing is not working for me BUT printing to the remote printer (as pushed via group policy etc) is fine - even with the PaperCut client (this just means people can't print things out at home which is a good thing!).

 

 

The only problem I seem to have is that the remote app won't fill the browser window unlike the full desktop session which does (not smart enough to figure this one out yet!).

 

I hope this information is helpful.

 

 

Ta,

 

Chris

Edited October 13, 2017 by krudler

[FN-GM]

I have been playing and can't get the RemoteApp to work. I just shows a black screen for about 30 seconds and disconnects.

 

Also do you have to create the remote app within the Windows RDS settings or can just leave that please?

[krudler]

I do have SIMS and a whole host of other apps published in an RDS session collection so you may need to but it is my understanding that you can do this through a 3rd party tool called RemoteAppTool from kimknight(

RemoteApp Tool - Kim Knight).

 

Sorry about the dodgy formatting - I'm trying to type this on a tablet.

 

Ta,

 

Chris