noVNC with WebRTC

⚠️ This project is in very alpha version, bugs are expected

What is that

noVNC, but it uses WebRTC instead of Websocket

   ┌───────────┐              ┌────────────┐           ┌──────────────┐
   │           │              │            │           │              │
   │  Browser  │    WebRTC    │  This app  │    TCP    │  VNC Server  │
   │           │  ──────────► │            │ ────────► │              │
   └───────────┘              └────────────┘           └──────────────┘

• The server app is built on rust, see /server
• The UI is taken from official noVNC repo, with minor adaptations and bundled using vite

How to use

Binary

./novnc-webrtc -h  # show help
./novnc-webrtc --listen "0.0.0.0:6901" --upstream "127.0.0.1:5901"

# then, open browser: http://localhost:6901

TODO: prebuilt binary via github actions

Docker

TODO

Changelog

v0.1.0: Initial release

How to build

Firstly, build the frontend. Please note that vite-plugin-singlefile is used to bundle the frontend into a single index.html

cd webui_vanilla
npm i
npm run build

Then, build the server.

cd ../server
cargo build -r

# output file: server/target/release/novnc-webrtc

Frontend index.html will be embedded into the final binary, making it portable and easy to deploy (no need to mess with dpkg or apt-get install, yay!!)

TODO

• Support HTTPS with custom key / certificate
• Close TCP connection as soon as WebRTC connection is closed
• Built-in TURN server
• Auto reconnect
• Maybe remake frontend using react-ts