Last Friday I launched my latest project at http://www.jumpsquares.net. You can also download the appliance based version over at the project homepage.
After a few feature requests, I added some new functionality to allow RDP, VNC, and SSH connection to the "server" string. This new version is 1.1.
While configuring a JumpSquare, there are going to be two unique strings that are going to be configured. First is the Jump Location. The Jump Location is the web address you want the JumpSquare to re-direct to. In this case, I'm redirecting it to my vSphere Web Client login page. The next line is where I enter the server or location where this application is installed. For my purpose, my vCenter server is kcvcenter.kendrickcoleman.c0m (please only use the server name that can be resolved via DNS or you can use the IP address). After that I have the choice of selecting None, RDP, SSH, or VNC. Choosing one of these options will give me the ability to connect to kcvcenter.kendrickcoleman.c0m through that option. Since this is a Windows machine, I selected RDP.
Now when I go back to the home page, I can hover over the server link to see a new tooltip that will display the type of connection protocol.
If I click on the link, a '.rdp' file is generated that will allow me to click on 'Open' and launch my RDP client to connect to this server.
SSH and VNC are different. If 'SSH' is selected, your browser requires the FireSSH plugin. Do NOT add 'ssh://' to the server name. If 'VNC' is selected, clicking on the link will open up a new tab in your browser pointing to servername:5800. This method has been tested with TightVNC and RealVNC (Enterprise license was tested, does not work on free license). The VNC software installed on the server requires the ability to render VNC over HTML5 on Port 5800. Java is required for TightVNC and RealVNC. Tested and works on Windows. Tested and failed to load Java on Mac. Port 5800 is the only one that can be used at this time.
What about doing RDP for the Jump Location? This is a bit more convoluted and didn't require a code change but I figure I would document it anyway. If you would like to put rdp://myserver as the Jump Location that can be done by doing the following:
- Windows requires custom registry change. I have NOT personally tried this. I took the blog posting as factual. This registry change will add the ability to put rdp:// into the browser window that will automatically launch mstsc.exe to the server name your specify.
- Mac requires CoRD. CoRD is a mac based RDP client so it will require you to install software.
The final change I made was making a button and modal help hint on the JumpSquare form and removing the italicized help block. This works perfectly on jumpsquares.net, but on the appliance based version the modal is shifted to the right of the screen. Just change your browser window size to get it back in the viewing area, read it, close it, then you never have to worry about clicking that button ever again.
Other minor changes were to the Help section and the homepage for jumpsquares.net
How to Update JumpSquares to the latest version
SaaS at http://www.jumpsquares.net:
- Nothing to do, this all done at my expense
Wiki Appliance Version:
- SSH or console into the jumpsquares appliance
- default username is 'root' and password is 'jump123'
- Change to the var/www/jumpsquares directory
- cd /var/www/jumpsquares
- Do a git pull to bring down the latest changes from the repository
- git pull
- Assuming you don't have any localized code changes, there will be no need to reset the 'head'
- Most new features are going to require some type of database additions so we need to make those changes
- rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=appliance-production
- Now you have the most up to date version of JumpSquares. You can reboot if you want but it's not necessary.
screenshots of the upgrade process
