How to pass data from a ThinStation to a session?

ThinLinc
,
1

Hi all,

In my project I need to transfer secret data from a ThinStation to a session to which the station is connected. What is the best way to achieve that? Some specifics about our setup.

  1. We have several TL agents behind a load balancer.
  2. ThinStations are publicly accessible and each can be used by many people.

Following are some ideas I’ve explored so far.

  1. ChatGPT suggested to use the option “-e var=value” for tlclient to set environment variables inside the session. However, in the current version “-e” is used to set encoding instead.

  2. I tried the “-s” switch to tell tlclient to run a command that would set variables, but the connection is closed immediately once the command finishes.

  3. Saving the token inside a local folder that is exported to the session. From my experience this solution is not very stable, so that the token may not be accessible when needed.

  4. Saving the token in a local file that is fetched from the session with ssh/scp. In order to make it secure, the connection can be opened by a daemon process running as root. The session then sends a request to the process that can be authenticated.

The last approach seems plausible, but I’m wondering if there’s a simpler one.

Thanks in advance for any help!

2

Hello,

Have you looked at using Local Drives for this? It is tunneled over SSH which makes it secure in the data transfer.

Regards,
Martin

3

Hi Martin

Yes, this is my idea #3. In our case this solution is not very stable: our users do not logout from their sessions but only disconnects and then reconnects later, often using different a ThinStation or the same after it has been restarted. This leads to the problem described on the second bullet from the “Limitations” section of the page you linked.

Best,
Kris