Virtual Machines -> Console -> Desktop Viewer enhanced to support vnc:// urls

[paul-hammant]

Pertinent RFC - https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7869.html

From the UI for a VM when looking at the console, and about to launch "desktop viewer"

For some reasons for me on my Ubuntu 24.04 machine with virt-viewer installed and orginarily working on it's own, when I click the blue launch button, a download is initiate of a file called download with no .vv suffix for some reason. Chrome doesn't know what do to with it so it is just placed in ~/Downloads. It could bebetter as <vmname>.vv instead of download.

Point of the feature request: IMO it would be best if it were: vnc://<hostname>:590x/more-args-for-that-vm

[garrett]

I thought for sure it was using a .vv extension for this file. This is probably either a regression or some change in browser behavior.

As far as vnc://, that still isn't supported in browsers.

Status of This Memo

This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.

I tried it again in both Firefox and Chrome just now and it does nothing but redirect to a search engine. We can't add support for that in Cockpit until browsers actually support it first. (This is why the .vv file format exists, as a launcher workaround to not having a vnc:// URL.)

[paul-hammant]

Good point.

[jelly]

Fixing the filename would be nice, the download code is located in fileDownload, currently it uses an iframe to download with a data url (The notes in the code says this is due to CSP issues with a normal anchor link). This likely? does not support naming the downloaded filename.

Maybe we can switch the button to be a real anchor with a download attribute which is $vmname.vv

[GuiltyDoggy]

The Console (Desktop Viewer) page says "Clicking "Launch remote viewer" will download a .vv file..." but it is not a .vv file. It is a text file with no extension at all. Fixing this would be a great quality of life improvement, as currently the browser will download this file and autolaunch a text editor instead of virt-viewer.