Apache Guacamole: Session recordings and playback in-browser — version 2

Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash

Assuming you’ve installed Apache Guacamole as per my manual installation blog post, this article guides you through enabling graphical session recording playback in the browser.

Create record directory

We need to create the directory where all the sessions records will be stored.

mkdir ${HOME}/docker-stack/guacamole/record

That folder requires some specific permissions:

• The frontend (guacamole/guacd) container can write to the directory.
• The backend (guacamole/guacamole) container can read from the directory, as well as read any files that are placed within the directory.

In order to meet these requirements, we need to get the UID of the guacamole_backend container:

root@instance:/# docker exec -it guacamole_backend id
uid=1000(guacd) gid=1000(guacd) groups=1000(guacd)

And the GID of the guacamole_frontend container:

root@instance:/# docker exec -it guacamole_frontend id
uid=1001(guacamole) gid=1001(guacamole) groups=1001(guacamole)

Then we modify the permissions and ownerships :

sudo chown -R 1000:1001 ${HOME}/docker-stack/guacamole/record
sudo chmod -R 2750 ${HOME}/docker-stack/guacamole/record

Update docker-compose

We need to edit the ${HOME}/docker-stack/guacamole/docker-compose.yml file we created in the installation blog post:

• The record folder should be mounted as a volume to both the guacamole_backend container and the guacamole_frontend container.
• We must set the RECORDING_SEARCH_PATH environment variable

So the complete version of the new ${HOME}/docker-stack/guacamole/docker-compose.yml file be like:

version: '3.9'

# networks
# create a network 'guacamole_net' in mode 'bridged'
networks:
  guacamole_net:
    driver: bridge
  haproxy_net:
    external: true

# services
services:
  # guacd
  guacd:
    container_name: guacamole_backend
    image: guacamole/guacd:1.5.3
    networks:
      guacamole_net:
    restart: always
    volumes:
    - ./drive:/drive:rw
    - ./record:/var/lib/guacamole/recordings:rw

  # postgres
  postgres:
    container_name: guacamole_database
    environment:
      PGDATA: /var/lib/postgresql/data/guacamole
      POSTGRES_DB: guacamole_db
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: '${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}'
      POSTGRES_USER: '${POSTGRES_USER}'
    image: postgres:15.0
    networks:
      guacamole_net:
    restart: always
    volumes:
    - ./init:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d:ro
    - ./data:/var/lib/postgresql/data:rw

  # guacamole
  guacamole:
    container_name: guacamole_frontend
    depends_on:
    - guacd
    - postgres
    environment:
      GUACD_HOSTNAME: guacd
      POSTGRESQL_DATABASE: guacamole_db
      POSTGRESQL_HOSTNAME: postgres
      POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD: '${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}'
      POSTGRESQL_USER: '${POSTGRES_USER}'
      POSTGRESQL_AUTO_CREATE_ACCOUNTS: true
      RECORDING_SEARCH_PATH: '/var/lib/guacamole/recordings'
    image: guacamole/guacamole:1.5.3
    links:
    - guacd
    networks:
      - guacamole_net
      - haproxy_net
    restart: always
    volumes:
    - ./drive:/drive:rw
    - ./record:/var/lib/guacamole/recordings:ro

What changed?

Check out the output of the diff command:

version: '3.9'

 # networks
 # create a network 'guacamole_net' in mode 'bridged'
 networks:
   guacamole_net:
     driver: bridge
   haproxy_net:
     external: true

 # services
 services:
   # guacd
   guacd:
     container_name: guacamole_backend
     image: guacamole/guacd:1.5.3
     networks:
       guacamole_net:
     restart: always
     volumes:
     - ./drive:/drive:rw
+    - ./record:/var/lib/guacamole/recordings:rw

   # postgres
   postgres:
     container_name: guacamole_database
     environment:
       PGDATA: /var/lib/postgresql/data/guacamole
       POSTGRES_DB: guacamole_db
       POSTGRES_PASSWORD: '${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}'
       POSTGRES_USER: '${POSTGRES_USER}'
     image: postgres:15.0
     networks:
       guacamole_net:
     restart: always
     volumes:
     - ./init:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d:ro
     - ./data:/var/lib/postgresql/data:rw

   # guacamole
   guacamole:
     container_name: guacamole_frontend
     depends_on:
     - guacd
     - postgres
     environment:
       GUACD_HOSTNAME: guacd
       POSTGRESQL_DATABASE: guacamole_db
       POSTGRESQL_HOSTNAME: postgres
       POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD: '${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}'
       POSTGRESQL_USER: '${POSTGRES_USER}'
       POSTGRESQL_AUTO_CREATE_ACCOUNTS: true
+      RECORDING_SEARCH_PATH: '/var/lib/guacamole/recordings'
     image: guacamole/guacamole:1.5.3
     links:
     - guacd
     networks:
       - guacamole_net
       - haproxy_net
     restart: always
     volumes:
     - ./drive:/drive:rw
+    - ./record:/var/lib/guacamole/recordings:ro

Now let’s apply these changes:

docker compose -f ${HOME}/docker-stack/guacamole/docker-compose.yml up -d

Testing

Edit the “Screen Recording” section of one of your existing connection settings. Enter the special value ${HISTORY_PATH}/${HISTORY_UUID} in the “Recording path” input box.

Check the “Automatically create recording path” box.

Demo

apache guacamole session playback demo video

Thank you for reading this article all the way to the end! I hope you found the information and insights shared here to be valuable and interesting. Get in touch with me on LinkedIn.

I appreciate your support and look forward to sharing more content with you in the future. Until next time!

This post also appears on my personal Blog.