vncssld - The VNC SSL repeater for UNIX

This is a VNC SSL repeater for UNIX. You can use it to be able to access your user's desktop using VNC SSL. The advantage of using a repeater is that you don't need to configure your firewall to be able to connect to your user's desktop. Since it is using SSL, It can even work using standard HTTP/HTTPS proxy (like squid or dansguardian).

The main advantages of VNCSSLD are:

Written in Perl 5, so no buffer overflow should be possible.
High security level using standard protocol (SSL is used for https).
You don't need to bother about configuring port forwarding on your internet router (for VNC clients and VNC servers).
Can run as unprivileged user.

Counterparts:

It has only be tested on Linux systems. It should work on any UNIX platform supporting Perl 5. It has never been tested under Microsoft Windows and should probably never run under this platform since it is using the POSIX module and the fork system call.
It only works with VNC SSL Clients and Servers (UltraVNC SSL Client and ssvnc for the client and UltraVNC SingleClick for the server). Standard VNC Clients and Servers wont work.
It needs Perl 5.

Download

You can download the latest version of vncssld here

vncssld installation

This documentation is only availlable for a UNIX server. If you want to use another server type ... try it at your risk ...

Required modules for vncssld Server

You will need the following perl modules on your server:

Sys::Syslog
Getopt::Long
Pod::Usage
IO::Socket::SSL
IO::Socket::UNIX
IO::Select
Fcntl
File::Basename
File::Temp
File::Path
POSIX
User::pwent
User::grent
version

As far as I know, these modules are all included in the standard library of Perl 5.10.

vncssld server installation

Download vncssld

# wget http://download.gna.org/vncssld/vncssld-latest.tar.gz

Untar the package where you want to install the vncssld server
```
# mkdir /opt
# cd /opt
# tar xzvf vncssld-latest.tar.gz
```
Create a symbolic link to /opt/vncssld
```
# cd /opt && ln -s vncssld-* vncssld
```
Create an unprivileged user that will run the server
```
# groupadd vncssld
# useradd -g vncssld vncssld
```

Create the /var/run/vnccssld directory and give it to this user

# mkdir /var/run/vncssld
# chown vncssld:vncssld /var/run/vncssld

Create a certificate TODO: find a way to easily create a self signed certificate

Run the server:

# /opt/vncssld/vncssld -u vncssld -g vncssld

Mailing list

The mailing list for vncssld users is at https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/vncssld-users.

Copyright

vncssld is released under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.