vjftw/cloud-desktops

Cloud-based Virtual Desktops on Google Cloud Platform

Cloud Desktops

This repository presents various cloud virtual desktops suitable for shared or single use in Google Cloud Platform via OS Login and Chrome Remote Desktop.

Quick Start

If you'd like to try this out without building your own Packer images and you trust me, feel free to use my public images in the vjp-cloud-desktops project and skip to step 3. e.g.

Debian Linux w/ XFCE4

DEBIAN_IMAGE="debian-xfce4-2024-06-28-6e184bd"
gcloud compute instances create debian-ws \
    --machine-type=e2-standard-2 \
    --boot-disk-size=50GB \
    --boot-disk-type=pd-ssd \
    --metadata enable-oslogin=true \
    --no-service-account \
    --no-scopes \
    --image-project vjp-cloud-desktops \
    --image "$DEBIAN_IMAGE"

Kali Linux w/ XFCE4

KALI_IMAGE="kali-xfce4-2024-06-28-6e184bd"
gcloud compute instances create kali-ws \
    --machine-type=e2-standard-2 \
    --boot-disk-size=50GB \
    --boot-disk-type=pd-ssd \
    --metadata enable-oslogin=true \
    --no-service-account \
    --no-scopes \
    --image-project vjp-cloud-desktops \
    --image "$KALI_IMAGE"

Arch Linux w/ XFCE4

ARCH_IMAGE="arch-xfce4-2023-07-14-9270dfd"
gcloud compute instances create arch-ws \
    --machine-type=e2-standard-2 \
    --boot-disk-size=50GB \
    --boot-disk-type=pd-ssd \
    --metadata enable-oslogin=true \
    --no-service-account \
    --no-scopes \
    --image-project vjp-cloud-desktops \
    --image "$ARCH_IMAGE"

Getting Started

1. Build your desired flavour by running its Please target (see below).
2. Boot your new image in Google Compute Engine.
3. SSH into your new instance via OS Login.
4. Go to https://remotedesktop.google.com/headless and skip to through authorise to get the command to run on your new instance. Run the command and follow the instructions.
5. The new instance will appear in https://remotedesktop.google.com/access.

Flavours

Debian

GCP_PROJECT_ID="my-project" ./pleasew run //flavours/debian:xfce4_build

Kali Linux

GCP_PROJECT_ID="my-project" ./pleasew run //flavours/debian/kali:xfce4_build

Kali Linux takes some time to build as it is based off Debian and replaces the Debian's sources with Kali's sources and thus replaces a lot of the existing packages.

cloud-desktops's Issues

Release description no longer lists images

It use to be that the release description contained the release images. For example 2022-06-17-3834e7a with:

kali-xfce4-2022-06-17-3834e7a
debian-xfce4-2022-06-17-3834e7a

However as of 2022-07-01-3e5a379 the release description is blank.

Tag 80e7bbd does not have `chrome-remote-desktop` group in `/etc/security/groups.conf`

The current master (tag 80e7bbd) appears not to have the chrome-remote-desktop group in /etc/security/groups.conf. This needs fixing

Create public automated build

Create an automated public build of these images to allow anyone to get started with these images straight away.

gcloud compute images add-iam-policy-binding image-name \
    --member='allAuthenticatedUsers' \
    --role='roles/compute.imageUser'

(https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/images/managing-access-custom-images#share-images-publicly)

• Decide on version scheme (Weekly/SemVer+OS versioning)