Web-Based Remote Desktop with Guacamole and Django

During a Rescale hackday, the author explored integrating in-browser remote desktop functionality using the Guacamole library, which facilitates remote desktop access by translating protocols like VNC, RDC, and SSH into a custom protocol. Guacamole comprises a daemon for protocol translation, JavaScript libraries for rendering, and a web application for communication. Although the default Java servlet web app presented integration challenges with Rescale's Django stack, the author quickly ported a hackday-level version to Python. Essential to this integration was managing socket connections through a system of locks to ensure thread-safe communication, although the current implementation relies on a global dictionary, limiting scalability. Despite this, the author praised Guacamole for its versatility and provided a sample Django/Guacamole project on GitHub, highlighting the HTTP tunneling approach's advantage for supporting older browsers.