Package: websockify
websockify: WebSockets support for any application/serverwebsockify was formerly named wsproxy and was part of thenoVNCproject.At the most basic level, websockify just translates WebSockets traffic
to normal socket traffic. Websockify accepts the WebSockets handshake,
parses it, and then begins forwarding traffic between the client and
the target in both directions.News/help/contactNotable commits, announcements and news are posted to@noVNCIf you are a websockify developer/integrator/user (or want to be)
please join thenoVNC/websockify
discussion groupBugs and feature requests can be submitted viagithub
issues.If you want to show appreciation for websockify you could donate to a great
non-profits such as:Compassion
International,SIL,Habitat for Humanity,Electronic Frontier
Foundation,Against Malaria
Foundation,Nothing But
Nets, etc. Please tweet@noVNCif you do.WebSockets binary dataStarting with websockify 0.5.0, only the HyBi / IETF
6455 WebSocket protocol is supported. There is no support for the older
Base64 encoded data format.Encrypted WebSocket connections (wss://)To encrypt the traffic using the WebSocket 'wss://' URI scheme you need to
generate a certificate and key for Websockify to load. By default, Websockify
loads a certificate file nameself.pembut the--cert=CERTand--key=KEYoptions can override the file name. You can generate a self-signed certificate
using openssl. When asked for the common name, use the hostname of the server
where the proxy will be running:openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -nodes -out self.pem -keyout self.pemFor a self-signed certificate to work, you need to make your client/browser
understand it. You can do this by installing it as accepted certificate, or by
using that same certificate for a HTTPS connection to which you navigate first
and approve. Browsers generally don't give you the "trust certificate?" prompt
by opening a WSS socket with invalid certificate, hence you need to have it
accept it by either of those two methods.If you have a commercial/valid SSL certificate with one or more intermediate
certificates, concat them into one file, server certificate first, then the
intermediate(s) from the CA, etc. Point to this file with the--certoption
and then also to the key with--key. Finally, use--ssl-onlyas needed.Additional websockify featuresThese are not necessary for the basic operation.Daemonizing: When the-Doption is specified, websockify runs
in the background as a daemon process.SSL (the wss:// WebSockets URI): This is detected automatically by
websockify by sniffing the first byte sent from the client and then
wrapping the socket if the data starts with '\x16' or '\x80'
(indicating SSL).Session recording: This feature that allows recording of the traffic
sent and received from the client to a file using the--recordoption.Mini-webserver: websockify can detect and respond to normal web
requests on the same port as the WebSockets proxy. This functionality
is activated with the--web DIRoption where DIR is the root of the
web directory to serve.Wrap a program: see the "Wrap a Program" section below.Log files: websockify can save all logging information in a file.
This functionality is activated with the--log-file FILEoption
where FILE is the file where the logs should be saved.Authentication plugins: websockify can demand authentication for
websocket connections and, if you use--web-auth, also for normal
web requests. This functionality is activated with the--auth-plugin CLASSand--auth-source ARGoptions, where CLASS is
usually one from auth_plugins.py and ARG is the plugin's configuration.Token plugins: a single instance of websockify can connect clients to
multiple different pre-configured targets, depending on the token sent
by the client using thetokenURL parameter, or the hostname used to
reach websockify, if you use--host-token. This functionality is
activated with the--token-plugin CLASSand--token-source ARGoptions, where CLASS is usually one from token_plugins.py and ARG is
the plugin's configuration.Other implementations of websockifyThe primary implementation of websockify is in python. There are
several alternate implementations in other languages available in
our sister repositorieswebsockify-js(JavaScript/Node.js) andwebsockify-other(C, Clojure, Ruby).In addition there are several other external projects that implement
the websockify "protocol". See the alternate implementationFeature
Matrixfor
more information.Wrap a ProgramIn addition to proxying from a source address to a target address
(which may be on a different system), websockify has the ability to
launch a program on the local system and proxy WebSockets traffic to
a normal TCP port owned/bound by the program.This is accomplished by the LD_PRELOAD library (rebind.so)
which intercepts bind() system calls by the program. The specified
port is moved to a new localhost/loopback free high port. websockify
then proxies WebSockets traffic directed to the original port to the
new (moved) port of the program.The program wrap mode is invoked by replacing the target with--followed by the program command line to wrap.`./run 2023 -- PROGRAM ARGS`The--wrap-modeoption can be used to indicate what action to take
when the wrapped program exits or daemonizes.Here is an example of using websockify to wrap the vncserver command
(which backgrounds itself) for use withnoVNC:`./run 5901 --wrap-mode=ignore -- vncserver -geometry 1024x768 :1`Here is an example of wrapping telnetd (from krb5-telnetd). telnetd
exits after the connection closes so the wrap mode is set to respawn
the command:`sudo ./run 2023 --wrap-mode=respawn -- telnetd -debug 2023`Thewstelnet.htmlpage in thewebsockify-jsproject demonstrates a simple WebSockets based telnet client (use
'localhost' and '2023' for the host and port respectively).Installing websockifyDownload one of the releases or the latest development version, extract
it and runpython3 setup.py installas root in the directory where you
extracted the files. Normally, this will also install numpy for better
performance, if you don't have it installed already. However, numpy is
optional. If you don't want to install numpy or if you can't compile it,
you can edit setup.py and remove theinstall_requires=['numpy'],line
before runningpython3 setup.py install.Afterwards, websockify should be available in your path. Runwebsockify --helpto confirm it's installed correctly.Running with Docker/PodmanYou can also run websockify using Docker, Podman, Singularity, udocker or
your favourite container runtime that support OCI container images.The entrypoint of the image is theruncommand.To build the image:./docker/build.shOnce built you can just launch it with the same
arguments you would give to theruncommand and taking care of
assigning the port mappings:docker run -it --rm -p <port>:<container_port> novnc/websockify <container_port> <run_arguments>For example to forward traffic from local port 7000 to 10.1.1.1:5902
you can use:docker run -it --rm -p 7000:80 novnc/websockify 80 10.1.1.1:5902If you need to include files, like for example for the--webor--certoptions you can just mount the required files in the/datavolume and then
you can reference them in the usual way:docker run -it --rm -p 443:443 -v websockify-data:/data novnc/websockify --cert /data/self.pem --web /data/noVNC :443 --token-plugin TokenRedis --token-source myredis.local:6379 --ssl-only --ssl-version tlsv1_2Changes0.11.0Command line now supports disabling directory listingsBasic Dockerfile included0.10.0Python 3.4 or newer is now requiredEmpty message frames are now supportedTokens can now specify a Unix domain socket file to connect toTime limits on JWT tokens are now respectedWhitespace is better tolerated in token filesLots of minor fixes...0.9.0Base64 support removed and binary mode is now requiredLow level WebSocket protocol handling now has its own classAuthentication now optionally required for web serverServer hostname can be used as the tokenJWT/JWS/JWE can be used for the tokenredis can be used for the tokenCan now log to syslogImproved latency by disabling Nagle for proxied connectionAdded client certificate authenticationSupport for password protected certificate key fileTLS ciphers and options are now configurableCan be invoked via inetdLots of minor fixes...0.8.0Make websockify properly terminate children on SIGTERM (#226)Remove logging in signal handlers (this can cause Python to hang under certain conditions) (#219)Make it easier to log to a file (#205)Add support for IPv6 addresses in tokens in the TokenFile token plugins (#197)Improve auth plugin framework to enable better support for HTTP auth (#194, #201)Fix bug in JSONTokenAPI token plugin (#192)Fix a missing variable in the exception handler (#178)0.7.0Python 3 support fixes (#140, #155, #159)Generic token-parsing plugins support (#162)Generic authentication plugins support (#172)Fixed frame corruption on big-endian systems (#161)Support heartbeats (via PING) and automatic responses to PONG (#169)Automatically reject unmasked client frames by default (strict mode) (#174)Automatically restart interrupted select calls (#175)Make 'run' respect environment settings (including virtualenv) (#176)0.6.1 - May 11, 2015PATCH RELEASE: Fixes a bug causing file_only to not be passed properly0.6.0 - Feb 18, 2014NOTE: 0.6.0 will break existing code that sub-classes WebsocketProxyRefactor to use standard SocketServer RequestHandler designFix zombie process bug on certain systems when using multiprocessingAdd better unit testsLog information via pythonloggingmodule0.5.1 - Jun 27, 2013use upstream einaros/ws (>=0.4.27) with websockify.jsfile_only and no_parent security options for WSRequestHandlerUpdate build of web-socket-js (c0855c6cae)add include/web-socket-js-project submodule to gimite/web-socket-js
for DSFG compliance.drop Hixie protocol support0.4.1 - Mar 12, 2013NOTE: 0.5.0 will drop Hixie protocol supportadd include/ directory and remove some dev files from source
distribution.0.4.0 - Mar 12, 2013NOTE: 0.5.0 will drop Hixie protocol supportuse Buffer base64 support in Node.js implementation0.3.0 - Jan 15, 2013refactor into modules: websocket, websocketproxyswitch to web-socket-js that uses IETF 6455change to MPL 2.0 license for include/*.jsfix session recording0.2.1 - Oct 15, 2012re-released with updated version number0.2.0 - Sep 17, 2012Binary data support in websock.jsTarget config file/dir and multiple targets with token selectorIPv6 fixesSSL target supportProxy to/from unix socket0.1.0 - May 11, 2012Initial versioned release.