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Setting up a private bridge

If the QAssist public bridges are not accessible to you, or you want to set up your own, follow this guide.

You can set up your own bridge using our open-source Docker container, at no additional cost to your team.

Communication

Bridges will need to be both accessible by your local web browser (typically exposed to the web) and able to communicate with the remote machine directly (typically joined to a private subnet).

When you access the QAssist app, your local web browser will retrieve an encrypted token that is then passed to the bridge, to then authenticate against a machine.

graph LR
  A[Local Web Browser] <-->|Encrypted Token| B[QAssist];
  A -->|WebSocket| C[Bridge];
  C -->|RDP| D[Remote Machine];
  C -->|VNC| D;
  C -->|SSH| D;
  C -->|Etc...| D;

Pre-requisites

  • A Linux machine capable of running a Docker container.
    • containerd and other runtimes are supported.

Setup

  1. In QAssist go to Bridges and click Create Bridge
    1. Name - choose a friendly name
    2. URL - The domain name/IP address and port (Default 8080) of the machine running the bridge container, prefixed with wss:// or ws:// if you don`t have an SSL certificate
  2. Click Add, after a few minutes you will receive an email with a secret key
  3. Continue the setup…
    1. Using a Cloud Platform
    2. Using a container runtime (e.g. Docker)

Sharing a Bridge Secret

Do not share the bridge secret key, as it can potentially be used to steal credentials, it is unique to you and cannot be recovered by us. You can re-generate a token in QAssist if you accidentally share it.

Using a Cloud Platform

If you are using a cloud platform the following instructions may not apply to you, please take a look at our Leveraging your cloud page on how to set up the bridge on your cloud platform.

Using a container runtime (e.g. Docker)

For a basic way to run the bridge, see the following steps, there are additional settings to allow you to configure the bridge below.

The bridge also supports SSL certificates (in pfx format), that you can use to enable SSL, additional information can be found in the SSL Setup section.

  1. To start the bridge, on your machine that you want to run the bridge, run the following in a command line
    1. docker run --name qassist-bridge --env Cipher__Key='SECRET KEY HERE' --restart always --detach glokon/guacws-next:latest
    2. Replace SECRET KEY HERE with the secret key you received in your email
    3. The default port for the container is 8080
    4. If using a different container runtime, the command may be different
  2. To stop the bridge, run the following commands
    1. docker stop qassist-bridge
    2. docker rm --force qassist-bridge

SSL Setup

To configure SSL, you have two options, provide your own certificate or use LetsEncrypt, by default when SSL is configured, the bridges default port is 8081.

Certificate

To use your own SSL certificate you will need to make sure its in pfx format, and you will need to provide the certificate password (If needed).

You will need to mount the directory where your certificate is, mount your directory to the container /certs/ directory by default, the container will look for a file called certificate.pfx.

  1. If the bridge is running, stop it
  2. Set the following environment variables
    1. Server__SSL__CertificatePath - (By default /certs/certificate.pfx') Path to look for the certificate
    2. Server__SSL__CertificatePassword - (If required) Password for the certificate
  3. The bridge will now be using the certificate for SSL

LetsEncrypt

To use LetsEncrypt, you must change the default HTTP port to 80, or have some way for LetsEncrypt to communicate with the bridge.

  1. If the bridge is running, stop it
  2. Set the following environment variables
    1. Server__LetsEncrypt__EmailAddress - your LetsEncrypt email
    2. Server__LetsEncrypt__Domains_N - (Where N is a zero-indexed incrementing number) each domain you want a LetsEncrypt certificate to be generated for
  3. Start the bridge again, the bridge will now request a certificate for each configured domain
  4. The bridge will now be using LetsEncrypt

Container Settings (Advanced)

The following are some advanced settings, that may require some knowledge of container runtimes, that aren't covered in this document, all the following settings are configured through environment variables.

Basic

  • Cipher__Key - The key provided by QAssist
    • Default: Empty

Logging

  • Logging__LogLevel__Default - Log level
    • Default: Information
    • Options: Error, Warning, Information, Debug, Trace

Server

  • Server__UseHsts - (When using SSL) Use HSTS
    • Default: false
    • Type: boolean
  • Server__HttpPort - HTTP Port
    • Default: 8080
    • Type: uint16
  • Server__HttpsPort - HTTPS Port
    • Default: 8081
    • Type: uint16
  • Server__MaxUploadSize - Max Upload size (Bytes) for file uploads to machines
    • Default: 100000000 (100 MB)
    • Type: uint32
  • Server__WebSocket__UseCompression - Whether to use compression for WebSockets
    • Default: false
    • Type: boolean

SSL

  • Server__LetsEncrypt__UseStagingServer - Use staging LetsEncrypt server
    • Default: false
    • Type: boolean
  • Server__LetsEncrypt__Domains__N - (N being a zero-indexed number) A domain to request a LetsEncrypt certificate
    • Default: Empty
  • Server__LetsEncrypt__EmailAddress - Email Address to use for requesting LetsEncrypt certificates
    • Default: Empty
  • Server__SSL__CertificatePath - Certificate path to use for SSL
    • Default: /etc/certificate.pfx
  • Server__SSL__CertificatePassword - Certificate password
    • Default: Empty