

Graphical Console Beta - neetuser
https://forum.linode.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=12212&p=68300#p68289

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Sir_Cmpwn
I'm a new dev at Linode, and this is the first product I helped ship. It was
very fun to work on - we used Node to write all of the glue that gets noVNC to
talk to qemu behind the scenes. LMK if you have questions, I can probably
answer them.

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zxcvcxz
Is any of the work open source? I'm also a node/js dev and this sounds like a
project I would be interested in.

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Sir_Cmpwn
I sent some fixes up to noVNC (along with the colleagues that worked on Glish
with me), but our node work is closed source and will remain so since it deals
with some internal things like authentication. However, we have some pretty
cool open source projects in the pipeline for the coming
weeks/months/years/decades.

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earlz
This is pretty cool. However, outside of abnormal OS installations or
something crazy like that, what is the actual use for this?

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gkop
I actually really like Linode, and am worried the direction of this comment
thread is going to be "Great, a frivolous feature probably containing a bunch
of security vulnerabilities." Yes, Linode has made some mistakes in the past
with security. But let's try to stay on topic today.

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Alupis
How is this innovation? Am I missing something?

Graphical consoles have existed for just about every other hypervisor since...
well, I've been virtualizing since ESX 3.5 days and even it had a graphical
guest console.

(Title and link have been changed - original was "Linode Really Innovates")

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gkop
Good point. I guess because it's in-browser? Would somebody who has tried it
report on responsiveness and whether it's HTML5 or Flash?

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Alupis
Even in-browser consoles have been done for a long time. At least Digital
Ocean and Ubiquity Hosting have... how else do you fix a broken firewall rule
that blocks SSH or something?

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gkop
Oh yea, I mean Linode's had the out-of-band in-browser console since at least
2009 when I first became a customer. Are DO and Ubiquity's consoles graphical,
too? If that's the case then I agree this is catching up, not innovation.

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Alupis
Ubiquity's did, although I never had a reason to run a GUI on any of my DO
instances -- however I don't see why they wouldn't -- all these "graphical"
consoles just use VNC to project the GUI into the browser.

I suspect there hasn't been much demand for Linode to integrate a full
graphical console, but it's been on their checklist for some time and are now
getting around to it. Could be a sign of polishing up the platform, which I'm
sure is good for all Linode users in general.

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mindcrime
This sounds really cool. Unfortunately I can't test it out yet, as all of my
Linodes appear to be the older Xen based ones. Migrating one now, just so I
can see what all of the fuss is about...

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tshannon
Cool, but honestly, I'm not sure I'd ever use it.

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jjulius
It's great for people who might be more comfortable with a GUI than CLI, but
yeah, I have no real use for it.

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neoCrimeLabs
This is neat.

I'm still patiently waiting for the ability to push compressed disk images via
API so I don't have to boot finix to do it. :-)

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giis
Do you have demo video or screencasting for this? Looks interesting..

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jetskindo
This could be a good time to upgrade that responsive design
[http://i.imgur.com/2SHWxc9.png](http://i.imgur.com/2SHWxc9.png)

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ksec
They just need a new Forum Software.

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devicenull
It's just noVNC connecting to qemu. This is a pretty standard feature, it's
just gluing together a couple pieces of open source software.

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lfowles
Another example of merely "gluing together a couple of pieces of open source
software":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224)

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davesque
Cool reference.

