Real Cloud OS build on Rackspace Ubuntu Cloud Server with Guacamole. Access a real Ubuntu 12.04 Desktop Computer on Cloud from your browser with everything. It is the Real Cloud OS versus EyeOS because it is a full real Ubuntu 12.04 Computer on OpenStack. Just a week ago we announced about EyeOS Open Source Development and found that Cloud Server as VNC Remote Desktop can actually build a Real Cloud OS. Here is the method to get your one in this guide to build your Real Cloud OS. You can browse from browser just like EyeOS, but this is a real Ubuntu 12.04 computer.
Real Cloud OS : Configuration, needed resources and needed knowledge
For usage of Real Cloud OS build in this way needs no technical knowledge about UNIX or Server. For building your own Real Cloud OS on Rackspace Ubuntu Cloud Server with Guacamole, that is the guide for, will need a basic idea about Cloud Computing, UNIX commands, SSH access etc. We have made the tutorial for building Real Cloud OS easy one server setup. In practice we used Next Generation Cloud Server based on OpenStack from Rackspace with 30 GB of RAM and Load Balancer.
Guacamole is Open Source and Freely available on Source Forge :
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1 | http://sourceforge.net/projects/guacamole/ |
Creating your Server Instance as a First Step to get your Real Cloud OS
Login to Next Generation Cloud Server control panel of The Rackspace Cloud and Create a Server :

Give the Server a name and select Ubuntu 12.04 as image to build your server, we tested with 4 GB RAM for this guide to build your Real Cloud OS with Rackspace Ubuntu Cloud Server with Guacamole :

Copy the Password from popup and IP address and paste them on your text editor :

Building your Real Cloud OS : Command Line Interface through SSH
For this part of building Real Cloud OS with Rackspace Ubuntu Cloud Server with Guacamole, simply login to your newly build server with SSH. First update the server :
1 | apt-get update |
Do a soft reboot from SSH. This is optional. Open sources.list :
1 | sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list |
and uncomment all the resources and save it. Install Ubuntu Desktop :
1 | sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop |
This will take a bit time as this is a big package. We are basically making the Server Edition a kind of extended desktop edition of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Install Apache Tomcat, run commands one by one :
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 | sudo apt-get install tasksel sudo tasksel sudo apt-get install apache2 /etc/init.d/apache2 restart sudo apt-get install python-software-properties sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sun-java-community-team/sun-java6 sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk sudo apt-get install tomcat6 sudo apt-get install tomcat6-admin sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat6 restart sudo apt-get install libvncserver0 sudo apt-get install libfreerdp1 |
sudo tasksel will give you a GUI, set it up as OpenSSH server. Run a upgrade by typing :
1 | sudo apt-get upgrade |
If you open the IP on browser, it should show the default “It works!” webpage. Download the Guacamole package :
1 | wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/guacamole/files/current/binary/ubuntu-12.04-amd64/guacamole-0.6.3-ubuntu-12.04-amd64.tar.gz |
Uncompress the packages :
1 | tar -xvzf guacamole-0.6.3-ubuntu-12.04-amd64.tar.gz |
Go to the directory :
1 | cd guacamole-0.6.3-ubuntu-12.04-amd64 |
Install the packages :
1 | sudo dpkg -i guacd_*.deb guacamole_*.deb libguac3_*.deb libguac-client-vnc0_*.deb |
Configure Tomcat :
1 | sudo dpkg -i guacamole-tomcat_*.deb |
You will get a kind of GUI, select Restart.
Come back to root :
1 | cd ~ |
Check the status of the App :
1 | ls -la /var/run /run |
Link them :
1 | sudo ln -f /var/lib/guacamole/guacamole.war /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps |
1 | sudo ln -f /etc/guacamole/guacamole.properties /usr/share/tomcat6/libv |
Restart Tomcat :
Edit this file :
1 | /etc/guacamole/user-mapping.xml |

This is very important file, configure username, IP address, Password Properly. Another file is :
1 | sudo nano /etc/guacamole/guacamole.properties |
You will get the online browser based Ubuntu here :
1 | http://your-ip:port-number/guacamole/ |
Port is usually 8080, 5900, 5901 depending upon
It is basically a full Ubuntu 12.04, nothing to show really.

Can u clarify what this means “This is very important file, configure username, IP address, Password Properly.””
lets say username is myuser and password is mypassword and ip address is 333.333.333.333 what will the sample user mapping file look like..??
This file = `/etc/guacamole/user-mapping.xml` (probably I wanted to say the file shown in above screenshot !)
Guacamole has undergone huge change over a year, I guess a video tut plus the copy of sample file would be helpful for you & other users. Actually that `user-mapping.xml` creates confusion to most of the users, so far my understanding goes.
You will find the official forum of Guacamole on Sourceforge too, may be that can help if you are in hurry for some reason.