[hamei]

Something a bit more targeted and elegant than just RDP

Someone posted instructions for displaying just a single program via rdp. That was a lot more elegant than showing an entire Windows/Loonix desktop. On an Octane rdp across the room was very nice, almost as good as just x-ing to a remote display (which one could do with Loonix, I imagine ? That'd be another option.)

Not that I wouldn't love something more integrated but better is the enemy of good :-)

[GeekLucanis]

WRP uses chromium and doesn't work over a network securely. I considered offering an open WRP but it's too insecure.

 If you have a secure network, this shouldn't be an issue. I run WRP for my old machines here- and I don't usually don't run anything on an old browser that could be as sensitive information.

[Trippynet]

WRP uses chromium and doesn't work over a network securely. I considered offering an open WRP but it's too insecure.

How about some work to make it more secure then? Besides, as others have pointed out, it depends what you are browsing. Would I use it for Internet banking? No. Idle browsing of news and tech websites? Sure!

[hamei]

Would I use it for Internet banking?

Would I even consider using internet banking ? You gotta be kidding !

Idle browsing of news and tech websites? Sure!

One thing (the only thing ?) I like about Mac is Little Snitch. Something like that for Irix would be great. Yes I know you can use ipfilter but the Snitch is very useful, versatile, handy, simple, clean, fast, accolade accolade accolade. Good program.

As for security, I personally would love a pseudo-ssl that told the apps it was checking but just passed everything through. Their stupid https is nothing but a giant worthless pain in the ass, designed to ensure that only google can insert ads into your browser. Fuck google and the salamander they rode in on.

[Raion]

If you're unfamiliar with how it works, WRP basically uses a Chromium binary to run and render webpages. The actual network protocol isn't the problem, the issues are:

1. It doesn't appear to handle more than few clients at once without maxing out an even decently spec'd server.

2. Chromium is a security nightmare

3. There's a massive amount of issues with allowing an open proxy of that kind, even if I setup some kind of IDENT system that uses the forum's database or something.

In general, that's well beyond my own skill to do. As I've indicated before. I understand most things well enough, but I don't even know how to actually create a lot of original code or perform major rewrites.

[Trippynet]

To be clear, I wouldn't expect WRP to be a centrally-hosted solution and fully agree that this would be highly problematic and open to abuse. My aim with WRP would be to run it locally, with the aid of a PC on my home network to handle the rendering. If we could then create clear instructions for how to set this up to allow others to do the same, that would be fine IMO.

[Raion]

While it's not incredibly hard to get it running on a local network getting it working especially with certain system configuration seems pretty difficult. I'm open to trying it out but it's not exactly the easiest walk in the park. I'll have to see if I can get it working on my raspberry pi under NetBSD.

[defaultrouteuk]

Hey there. 

Pretty sure there must be a worthy-ness ladder to climb before I can join in these discussions as a peer but here's my 2p.

I like the idea of WRP. I'm quite sure (like you) it's not the answer to the browser issue across the board but it should provide a decent bridge for a lot of content out there. 

If I spun up a small proof of concept I was thinking that we could improve performance by dropping a bunch of WRP boxen behind an application aware load balancer. I had a similar idea last year when I wanted to host my old O2 but also offer some level of security protection off the SGI host (the proxy was also a WAF). Anyway, just an idea. If anyone wants to try I'm game. One other benefit of this might be IP 6to4 traffic where we can poll IPv6 servers with the WRP and backhaul to the client in IPv4. Just a thought.

Rich

Edit: for the security issue I'm thinking what if we offered an SSH tunnel to the load balancer (in some way) and passed keys (like AWS or others) so you get a kit, install on your SGI, ssh to the WRP host, tunnel port 80/443...job done. Then the actual WRP ports wouldn't be open to the wider world. Sure the keys can get sent about and sure...ah...damn it. Well, we can think about it

[Raion]

That would work, or a simple http authentication that validates based on the forum password hash. We could probably introduce a toggle pretty easily. I'm not opposed to including something like this but it's definitely going to be bespoke.

[shrek]

A possible solution might be Browservice. It allows you to browse the modern web from IRIX with a native browser. Some people have confirmed that Mozilla works. I made a thread about it here: http://forums.irixnet.org/thread-2290.html

https://github.com/ttalvitie/browservice

Browservice differs from WRP in that it uses JavaScript on the client browser to animate the browser view and gather user input events, while in WRP, the user has to use web forms and image maps to provide the input, and the page has to be reloaded for every update in the view. Thus Browservice gives the user a more immersive web browsing experience, but also requires a newer client browser and more powerful hardware. 

It has a few things that need to be fixed. 

The following features are currently missing but could be implemented in future versions:

• Streaming audio to client (currently audio is played locally by the proxy server)
  
• Less hackish keyboard handling (different browsers send very different JavaScript key events)
  
• Integration with web search engines
  
• Bookmarks
  
• File uploads
  
• Page zooming