Start local applications on an apache server using a browser
 

Hi,
I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to configure apache, or any other linux http server, to allow the visiting user to start applications installed locally on the http server and get the GUI of that application displayed in a java applet (or any other similar solution).

In short, I'm looking for an alternative solution to proprietary technologies such as Citrix and Microsoft Remote Access Gateway.

Any suggestions are highly welcome.

Something like this http://danielwebb.us/software/vnc/ ? Allows to connect server via VNC inside a browser. Then you can run apps as you are running on that box itself in GUI. But for this, you need to install VNC server on machine. In other words, Apache alone can't do this work.

Thanks for the reply

Using VNC will work for running the applications installed on the local box. If I could get apache into the loop, I could use whatever authentication mechanism apache uses to authenticate users before they execute their applications.

I think you can get apache in loop only for hosting web based VNC client, which your users can load into their browsers directly. For authentications, you can use apache authentication but challenge will be turning that into system login. In other words, using apache login session as system login session. Softwares like Webmin do this for their SSH client (I am not 100% sure as used it long time back).