Installing Apache Guacamole through Docker

Before You Begin

1. If you have not already done so, create a Linode account and Compute Instance. See our Getting Started with Linode and Creating a Compute Instance guides.

2. Follow our Setting Up and Securing a Compute Instance guide to update your system. You may also wish to set the timezone, configure your hostname, create a limited user account, and harden SSH access.

Note

This guide is written for a non-root user. Commands that require elevated privileges are prefixed with sudo. If you’re not familiar with the sudo command, you can check our Users and Groups guide.

Installing Docker

To install Docker CE (Community Edition), follow the instructions within one of the guides below:

• Installing and Using Docker on Ubuntu and Debian

• Installing and Using Docker on CentOS and Fedora

For complete instructions on even more Linux distributions, reference the Install Docker Engine section of Docker’s official documentation.

After installation, you can pull the following Docker images for use in later steps:

docker pull guacamole/guacamole
docker pull guacamole/guacd
docker pull mysql/mysql-server

Setting up MySQL for Database Authentication

Apache Guacamole requires a method for user authentication. Database authentication through MySQLis covered in this section, though PostgreSQL and MariaDB are supported supported as well as other non-database methods. To explore additional options, open the Guacamole Manual and review any sections with “authentication” in their headings.

1. Create a database initialization script to create a table for authentication:

   docker run --rm guacamole/guacamole /opt/guacamole/bin/initdb.sh --mysql > initdb.sql
   

2. Generate a one-time password for MySQL root. View the generated password in the logs:

   docker run --name example-mysql -e MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD=yes -e MYSQL_ONETIME_PASSWORD=yes -d mysql/mysql-server
   docker logs example-mysql
   

   Docker logs should print the password in the terminal.

   [Entrypoint] GENERATED ROOT PASSWORD: <password>

3. Rename and move initdb.sql into the MySQL container.

   docker cp initdb.sql example-mysql:/guac_db.sql
   

4. Open a bash shell within the MySQL Docker container.

   docker exec -it example-mysql bash
   

   The shell prompt now changes to bash-4.4# or something similar.

5. Within the bash shell prompt for the container, log in to mysql as the root user:

   mysql -u root -p
   

   The prompt should change again to mysql>.

6. While in the mysql prompt, change the root password, create a database, and create a new user for that database. When running the below commands, replace any instance of password with a secure password string for the mysql root user and the new user for your database, respectively.

   ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
   CREATE DATABASE guacamole_db;
   CREATE USER 'guacamole_user'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
   GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE ON guacamole_db.* TO 'guacamole_user'@'%';
   FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
   

7. Once completed, enter quit to exit mysql and return to the bash shell for the container.

8. While in the bash shell, create tables from the initialization script for the new database.

   cat guac_db.sql | mysql -u root -p guacamole_db
   

   If you’d like, you can verify that the tables were successfully created by logging back into the mysql prompt and viewing the tables in the database:

   mysql -u guacamole_user -p
   USE guacamole_db;
   SHOW TABLES;
   quit
   

9. Leave the bash shell for the container and return to the main shell of your Linux system by entering exit.

Initialize the Guacamole Containers

1. Start guacd in Docker:

   docker run --name example-guacd -d guacamole/guacd
   

2. Start guacamole in Docker, making sure to link the containers so Guacamole can verify credentials stored in the MySQL database. Replace the value for MYSQL_PASSWORD with the password you configured for the MySQL database user guacamole_user.

   docker run --name example-guacamole --link example-guacd:guacd --link example-mysql:mysql -e MYSQL_DATABASE=guacamole_db -e MYSQL_USER=guacamole_user -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=guacamole_user_password -d -p 127.0.0.1:8080:8080 guacamole/guacamole
   

3. To verify that all the docker containers are running properly, run the following command.

   docker ps -a
   

   You should see each container that you created in previous steps.

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

• Apache Guacamole