Teleport Connect (previously Teleport Terminal, package name teleterm) is a desktop application that allows easy access to Teleport resources.
Please refer to the Using Teleport Connect page from our docs.
Note: At the moment, the OSS build of Connect is broken. Please refer to #17706 for a temporary workaround.
Teleport Connect consists of two main components: the tsh tool and the Electron app.
To get started, first we need to build tsh.
cd teleport
make build/tshThe build output can be found in the build directory. The tsh binary will be packed together with
the Electron app.
Next, we're going to build the Electron app. This project uses Node.js v16 and Yarn v1.
cd teleport
yarn install
yarn build-term && CONNECT_TSH_BIN_PATH=$PWD/build/tsh yarn package-termThe resulting package can be found at web/packages/teleterm/build/release.
For more details on how Connect is built for different platforms, see the Build process section.
Make sure to run yarn build-native-deps-for-term first before attempting to launch the app in
development mode. That's because Electron is running its own version of Node. That command will
fetch or build native packages that were made for that specific version of Node.
cd teleport
yarn install
yarn build-native-deps-for-termTo launch teleterm in development mode:
cd teleport
yarn start-term
# By default, the dev version assumes that the tsh binary is at build/tsh.
# You can provide a different absolute path to a tsh binary though the CONNECT_TSH_BIN_PATH env var.
CONNECT_TSH_BIN_PATH=$PWD/build/tsh yarn start-termFor a quick restart which restarts the Electron app and the tsh daemon, press F6.
Rebuilding them is needed only if you change any of the files in proto/teleport/lib/teleterm dir.
To rebuild and update gRPC proto files:
make grpcResulting Go and JS files can be found in gen/proto.
Run generate-grpc-shared script from teleterm/package.json.
It generates protobuf files from *.proto files in sharedProcess/api/proto.
Resulting files can be found in sharedProcess/api/protogen.
yarn package-term is responsible for packaging the app code for distribution.
On all platforms, with the exception of production builds on macOS, the CONNECT_TSH_BIN_PATH env
var is used to provide the path to the tsh binary that will be included in the package.
See Teleport Connect build process on Slab for bulid process documentation that is specific to Gravitational.
If node-pty doesn't provide precompiled binaries for your system and the specific Electron version, you will need to install the dependencies required by node-pty.
To create arm64 deb and RPM packages you need to provide USE_SYSTEM_FPM=1 env var.
To make a fully-fledged build on macOS with Touch ID support, you need two things:
- a signed version of tsh.app
- an Apple Developer ID certificate in your Keychain
When running yarn package-term, you need to provide these environment variables:
APPLE_USERNAMEAPPLE_PASSWORDCONNECT_TSH_APP_PATHCSC_NAME(optional, developer certificate ID)
The details behind those vars are described below.
Unlike other platforms, macOS needs the whole tsh.app to be bundled with Connect, not just the tsh binary. This is in order to support Touch ID and provide access to the same Secure Enclave keys. That is, if you add Touch ID as MFA through tsh, we want tsh.app bundled with Connect to have access to the same keys.
Since Connect piggybacks on tsh for authn, this amounts to just copying a signed & notarized version
of tsh.app into Teleport Connect.app/Contents/MacOS. All interactions with Secure Enclave are done
through tsh at the moment, so Connect doesn't need to do anything extra, other than skipping signing
of tsh.app during the build process (as we expect it to be already signed).
The path to a signed version of tsh.app should be provided through the CONNECT_TSH_APP_PATH env
variable.
Signing & notarizing is required if the application is supposed to be ran on devices other than the one that packaged it. See electron-builder's docs for a general overview and Teleport Connect build process Slab page for Gravitational-specific nuances.
For the most part, the device that's doing the signing & notarizing needs to have access to an Apple
Developer ID (certificate + private key). electron-builder should automatically discover it if
Keychain is unlocked. The CSC_NAME env var can be additionally provided to point electron-builder
towards the specific developer ID certificate/key we want to use, if multiple are available.
CSC_NAME can either be SHA-1 of the certificate or its name.
On top of that, you must provide env vars that will be used for notarization. APPLE_USERNAME must
be set to the account email address associated with the developer ID. APPLE_PASSWORD must be an
app-specific password, not the account password.
The general approach is that a resource can become unavailable at any time due to a variety of reasons: the resource going offline, the cluster going offline, the device running Connect going offline, the cluster user losing access to the resource, just to name a few.
Connect must gracefully handle a resource becoming unavailable and make as few assumptions about resource availability as possible.
+------------+
| |
+-------+---------+ |
| | |
| teleport +--+
| clusters |
| |
+------+-+--------+
^ ^ External Network
+------------------------------------------------|-|--------------------------------------------------------------+
| | Host OS
Clients (psql) | |
| | |
v | |
+--------+---------------+ | |
| | SNI/ALPN | | GRPC
+--+----------------------+ | routing | |
| | | | |
| local proxies +-+ | |
| | | |
+-------------------+-----+ | |
^ | |
| | |
+---------------+ | tls/tcp on localhost | |
| local | | | |
| user profile | | v v
| (files) | | +------+-+-------------------+ +-------------------------------+
+-------^-------+ | | | | |
^ +-------------------+ tsh daemon | | Electron Shared Process |
| | (golang) | | (PTY) |
+<------------------------------+ | | |
+-------------+--------------+ +-------------------------------+
+--------+-----------------+ ^ ^
| Terminal | | |
| Electron Main Process | | GRPC API | GRPC API
+-----------+--------------+ | (domain socket) | (domain socket)
^ | |
| | |
IPC | | +------------------------------+
named pipes | | |
v Terminal UI (Electron Renderer Process) | |
+-----------+------------+---------------------------------------------+
| -gateways | root@node1 × | k8s_c × | rdp_win2 × | |
| https://localhost:22 +---------------------------------------------+
| https://localhost:21 | |
+------------------------+ ./ |
| -clusters | ../ |
| -cluster1 | assets/ |
| +servers | babel.config.js |
| node1 | build/ |
| node2 | src/ |
| -dbs | |
| mysql+prod | |
| mysql+test | |
| +cluster2 | |
| +cluster3 | |
+------------------------+---------------------------------------------+