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Getting Started with the VNC Proxy

The VNC Proxy is an OpenStack component that allows users of Nova to access their instances through a websocket enabled browser (like Google Chrome).

A VNC Connection works like so:

  • User connects over an api and gets a url like http://ip:port/?token=xyz
  • User pastes url in browser
  • Browser connects to VNC Proxy though a websocket enabled client like noVNC
  • VNC Proxy authorizes users token, maps the token to a host and port of an instance’s VNC server
  • VNC Proxy initiates connection to VNC server, and continues proxying until the session ends

Configuring the VNC Proxy

nova-vncproxy requires a websocket enabled html client to work properly. At this time, the only tested client is a slightly modified fork of noVNC, which you can at find http://github.com/openstack/noVNC.git

Todo

add instruction for installing from package

noVNC must be in the location specified by –vncproxy_wwwroot, which defaults to /var/lib/nova/noVNC. nova-vncproxy will fail to launch until this code is properly installed.

By default, nova-vncproxy binds 0.0.0.0:6080. This can be configured with:

  • –vncproxy_port=[port]
  • –vncproxy_host=[host]

Enabling VNC Consoles in Nova

At the moment, VNC support is supported only when using libvirt. To enable VNC Console, configure the following flags:

  • –vnc_console_proxy_url=http://[proxy_host]:[proxy_port] - proxy_port defaults to 6080. This url must point to nova-vncproxy
  • –vnc_enabled=[True|False] - defaults to True. If this flag is not set your instances will launch without vnc support.

Getting an instance’s VNC Console

You can access an instance’s VNC Console url in the following methods:

  • Using the direct api: eg: ‘stack –user=admin –project=admin compute get_vnc_console instance_id=1’
  • Support for Dashboard, and the Openstack API will be forthcoming

Accessing VNC Consoles without a web browser

At the moment, VNC Consoles are only supported through the web browser, but more general VNC support is in the works.