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.
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.
cd teleport
pnpm install
pnpm build-term && CONNECT_TSH_BIN_PATH=$PWD/build/tsh pnpm package-termThe resulting package can be found at web/packages/teleterm/build/release.
For more details on how Connect is built for different platforms, see the Build process section.
cd teleport
pnpm install && make build/tshTo launch teleterm in development mode:
cd teleport
# By default, the dev version assumes that the tsh binary is at build/tsh.
pnpm start-term
# You can provide a different absolute path to the tsh binary though the CONNECT_TSH_BIN_PATH env var.
CONNECT_TSH_BIN_PATH=$PWD/build/tsh pnpm start-termTo automatically restart the app when tsh gets rebuilt or when the main process or preload scripts change, use watchexec:
watchexec --restart --watch build --filter tsh --no-project-ignore -- pnpm start-term -wThis can be combined with a tool like gow to automatically rebuild tsh:
gow -s -S '✅\n' -g make build/tshThe teleterm object defined on window contains the entirety of AppContext. This is useful for
debugging state of different AppContext services.
The deepLinkLaunch function defined on window allows you to launch a deep link from the browser
console. Normally this feature is reserved only for the packaged app since the OS has to recognize
Connect as the handler for the custom protocol and send the deep link event to the main process.
This function completely bypasses the interaction with the main process and sends the URL straight
to the frontend app.
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.
pnpm 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 pnpm package-term, you need to provide these environment variables:
APPLE_USERNAMEAPPLE_PASSWORDCONNECT_TSH_APP_PATHCSC_NAME(optional, developer certificate ID)TEAMID
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 Team ID needed as an input for notarization must be provided via the TEAMID environment
variable. The top-level Makefile exports this when yarm package-term is called from make release-connect with either the developer or production Team ID depending on the ENVIRONMENT_NAME
environment variable. See the top-level darwin-signing.mk for details.
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 | |
+------------------------+---------------------------------------------+