Where is guacamole-client?

Question

I've followed the instructions here: http://guac-dev.org/doc/gug/installing-guacamole.html

This says

Guacamole is separated into two pieces: guacamole-server, which provides the guacd proxy and related libraries, and guacamole-client, which provides the client to be served by your servlet container, usually Tomcat.

guacamole-client is available in binary form, but guacamole-server must be built from source. Don't be discouraged: building the components of Guacamole from source is not as difficult as it sounds, and the build process is automated. You just need to be sure you have the necessary tools installed ahead of time. With the necessary dependencies in place, building Guacamole only takes a few minutes.

And then proceed to describe how to install guacamole-server and use it. I can now go to http://localhost:8080/guacamole/ and access the server and see which clients have connected.

How do I connect a client though? I see no documentation of where the remote desktop needs to browse to in order to run the guacamole-client?

Or have I totally misunderstood this?

Answer 1

The key phrase in the quoted documentation is:

... guacamole-client, which provides the client to be served by your servlet container, usually Tomcat.

"guacamole-client" is the web application and the client. When a user visits the URL for your Guacamole server, logs in, and clicks on a connection, they are connected to the corresponding remote desktop via Guacamole's JavaScript client which is served to their browser like any other web application.

I can now go to http://localhost:8080/guacamole/ and access the server and see which clients have connected.

The list you see when you first log in to your Guacamole server is not the list of clients that have connected; it is the list of connections to remote desktops which are available. If you click on one of those connections, you will be connected using Guacamole's own built-in JavaScript client.

How do I connect a client though? I see no documentation of where the remote desktop needs to browse to in order to run the guacamole-client?

The remote desktop does not need to do anything - Guacamole will simply connect to it. You can see a video of the overall user experience on the Guacamole website which may hopefully clear things up for you:

https://vimeo.com/116207678

Overall:

1. You deploy guacamole-client (the web application) and install guacamole-server (the remote desktop proxy that the web application uses in the backend). The combination of these two pieces of software makes up a typical Guacamole server.
2. You and your users can log in through the web application and connect to remote desktops using a web browser.
3. You do not need to explicitly run a client.