X2Go - everywhere@home

This document takes you through the steps required to set up a simple X2Go Session Broker demo environment, consisting of a test client (x2goclient1.x2go.example.com) and the following servers:

• ldap1.x2go.example.com
• nfs1.x2go.example.com
• pg1.x2go.example.com
• x2gobroker1.x2go.example.com
• x2goserver1.x2go.example.com
• x2goserver2.x2go.example.com

DO NOT EVER USE THIS IN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT! YOU WILL HURT YOURSELF VERY BADLY IF YOU IGNORE THIS WARNING!

These instructions violate almost every “best practice”/standard there is!

They are meant to get an X2Go Session Broker demo enviroment set up, fast.

Nothing more, nothing less.

This setup has the following shortcomings:

• Massive lack of security:
  • Unencrypted LDAP connections
  • All passwords - users, database admin, root, are set to the value “start”
  • SSH keyfile login is only enforced for the root account
• No redundancy for critical components
  • Only a single LDAP server, no replication
  • Only a single NFS server
  • Only a single Postgres server
• No backup
• No monitoring/alerting
• No easy manageability/heavy abuse of LDAP:
  • LDAP settings are converted from local settings on the “ldap1” server
  • what ends up in LDAP this way is not something you want to work with in a production environment
  • it will be faster to set up a new LDAP server with the proper settings for your production environment than to base your server on this demo and trying to “clean up” afterwards
  • Also, no user-friendly tool to manage LDAP settings is installed by default.