selfhosted-apps-docker/rustdesk

Rustdesk in docker

guide-by-example

Purpose & Overview

Remote desktop application.

• Official site
• Github
• DockerHub

Rustdesk is a young opensource replacement for TeamViewer or Anydesk.
The major aspects is that it does NAT punching, and lets you host all the infrastructure for it to function.

Written in rust(gasp), with Dart and Flutter framework for client side.

The architecture is relatively simple.

• run server reachable online
• install clients on PCs you want to connect from/to

Server sits online and clients register with it when installed/run. Thanks to keeping communication with the server open, they are able to punch a hole in NAT and so a connection can be initialized from the outside without the need for opening of ports.

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Files and directory structure

/home/
└── ~/
    └── docker/
        └── rustdesk/
            ├── data/
            ├── .env
            └── docker-compose.yml

• data/ - persistent data, contains sqlite database and the api key
• .env - a file containing environment variables for docker compose
• docker-compose.yml - a docker compose file, telling docker how to run the containers

You only need to provide the two files.
The directory is created by docker compose on the first run.

docker-compose

Using an edited version of S6-overlay based compose.
It's a simpler, single container approach, without the noise of hbbs/hbbr. It also has health check implemented.

There is no network section since its fine to run this completely isolated.

docker-compose.yml

services:
  rustdesk:
    image: rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:latest
    container_name: rustdesk
    hostname: rustdesk
    restart: unless-stopped
    env_file: .env
    ports:
      - 21115:21115
      - 21116:21116
      - 21116:21116/udp
      - 21117:21117
      - 21118:21118
      - 21119:21119
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data

.env

# GENERAL
MY_DOMAIN=example.com
DOCKER_MY_NETWORK=caddy_net
TZ=Europe/Bratislava

# RUSTDESK
RELAY=rust.example.com:21117
ENCRYPTED_ONLY=0

Port forwarding

as can be seen in the compose

• 21115 - 21119 TCP need to be forwarded to docker host
  
• 21116 is TCP and UDP

21115 is used for the NAT type test, 21116/UDP is used for the ID registration and heartbeat service, 21116/TCP is used for TCP hole punching and connection service, 21117 is used for the Relay services, and 21118 and 21119 are used to support web clients.

source

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The usage on clients

• download and install the client apps from the official site
• three dots near ID > ID/Relay Server > ID Server: rust.example.com > OK
• the green dot at the bottom should stay green saying "ready"
• done
• in the docker server logs you should see machines public IP and ID code it was given

Encrypted use

For encrypted communication and to prevent undesirables access to the server

• the encryption public key is on the docker host:
  ~/docker/rustdesk/data/id_ed25519.pub
• you can manually add it to any client application
  three dots near ID > ID/Relay Server > Key: 3AVva64bn1ea2vsDuOuQH3i8+2M=
• to only allow clients with the key on server:
  in the env_file set ENCRYPTED_ONLY=1 and down/up the compose.

On windows one can deploy client with these settings pre-set by renaming the installation file to: rustdesk-host=<host-ip-or-name>,key=<public-key-string>.exe

example: rustdesk-host=rust.example.com,key=3AVva64bn1ea2vsDuOuQH3i8+2M=.exe

If by chance the public key contains symbols not usable in windows filenames, down the container, delete the files id_ed25519 and id_ed25519.pub, up the container

Trouble shooting

From what I read, most client side issues come from two differently set rustdesk client applications running on the same machine.

Uninstall/remove all, plus delete:

• C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Roaming\RustDesk
• %AppData%\RustDesk

restart and do fresh client install

Update

Manual image update:

• docker-compose pull
  
• docker-compose up -d
  
• docker image prune

Backup and restore

Backup

Using borg that makes daily snapshot of the entire directory.

Restore

• down the bookstack containers docker-compose down
  
• delete the entire bookstack directory
  
• from the backup copy back the bookstack directory
  
• start the containers docker-compose up -d