About this README

This README is intended to provide quick and to-the-point documentation for technical users intending to compile parts of Apache Guacamole themselves.

Source archives are available from the downloads section of the project website:

http://guacamole.apache.org/

A full manual is available as well:

http://guacamole.apache.org/doc/gug/

What is guacamole-server?

The guacamole-server package is a set of software which forms the basis of the Guacamole stack. It consists of guacd, libguac, and several protocol support libraries.

guacd is the Guacamole proxy daemon used by the Guacamole web application and framework. As JavaScript cannot handle binary protocols (like VNC and remote desktop) efficiently, a new text-based protocol was developed which would contain a common superset of the operations needed for efficient remote desktop access, but would be easy for JavaScript programs to process. guacd is the proxy which translates between arbitrary protocols and the Guacamole protocol.

Required dependencies

All software within guacamole-server is built using the popular GNU Automake, and thus provides the standard configure script. Before compiling, at least the following required dependencies must already be installed:

1) Cairo (http://cairographics.org/)

2) libjpeg-turbo (http://libjpeg-turbo.virtualgl.org/)
   OR libjpeg (http://www.ijg.org/)

3) libpng (http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html)

4) OSSP UUID (http://www.ossp.org/pkg/lib/uuid/)

Optional dependencies

In addition, the following optional dependencies may be installed in order to enable optional features of Guacamole. Note that while the various supported protocols are technically optional, you will no doubt wish to install the dependencies of at least ONE supported protocol, as Guacamole would be useless otherwise.

RDP:
    * FreeRDP (http://www.freerdp.com/)

SSH:
    * libssh2 (http://www.libssh2.org/)
    * OpenSSL (https://www.openssl.org/)
    * Pango (http://www.pango.org/)

Telnet:
    * libtelnet (https://github.com/seanmiddleditch/libtelnet)
    * Pango (http://www.pango.org/)

VNC:
    * libVNCserver (http://libvnc.github.io/)

Support for audio within VNC:
    * PulseAudio (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/)

Support for SFTP file transfer for VNC or RDP:
    * libssh2 (http://www.libssh2.org/)
    * OpenSSL (https://www.openssl.org/)

Support for WebP image compression:
    * libwebp (https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/)

"guacenc" video encoding utility:
    * FFmpeg (https://ffmpeg.org/)

Compiling and installing guacd, libguac, etc.

All software within guacamole-server is built using the popular GNU Automake, and thus provides the standard configure script.

1. Run configure

   $ ./configure

   Assuming all dependencies have been installed, this should succeed without errors. If you wish to install the init script as well, you need to specify the location where your system init scripts are located (typically /etc/init.d):

   $ ./configure --with-init-dir=/etc/init.d

   Running configure in this manner will cause the "make install" step to install an init script to the specified directory, which you can then activate using the service management mechanism provided by your distribution).

2. Run make

   $ make

   guacd, libguac, and any available protocol support libraries will now compile.

3. Install (as root)

   make install

   All software that was just built, including documentation, will be installed.

   guacd will install to your /usr/local/sbin directory by default. You can change the install location by using the --prefix option for configure.

Running guacd

If you installed the init script during compile and install, you should be able to start guacd through the service management utilities provided by your distribution (if any) or by running the init script directly (as root):

# /etc/init.d/guacd start

Root access is needed to write the pidfile /var/run/guacd.pid. You can also run guacd itself directly without the init script (as any user):

$ guacd

guacd currently takes several command-line options:

-b HOST 

    Changes the host or address that guacd listens on.

-l PORT

    Changes the port that guacd listens on (the default is port 4822).

-p PIDFILE

    Causes guacd to write the PID of the daemon process to the specified
    file. This is useful for init scripts and is used by the provided init
    script.

-L LEVEL

    Sets the maximum level at which guacd will log messages to syslog and,
    if running in the foreground, the console.  Legal values are debug,
    info, warning, and error.  The default value is info.

-f
    Causes guacd to run in the foreground, rather than automatically
    forking into the background. 

Additional information can be found in the guacd man page:

$ man guacd

Reporting problems

Please report any bugs encountered by opening a new issue in the JIRA system hosted at:

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/GUACAMOLE