RustDesk Server Program

Manually • Docker • S6-overlay • Keypair • Debian • Variables
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RustDesk Server Program

Self-host your own RustDesk server, it is free and open source.

How to build manually

cargo build --release

Three executables will be generated in target/release.

hbbs - RustDesk ID/Rendezvous server
hbbr - RustDesk relay server
rustdesk-utils - RustDesk CLI utilities

You can find updated binaries on the releases page.

If you want to develop your own server, rustdesk-server-demo might be a better and simpler start for you than this repo.

Docker images

Docker images are automatically generated and published on every github release. We have 2 kind of images.

Classic image

These images are build against ubuntu-20.04 with the only addition of the main binaries (hbbr and hbbs). They're available on Docker hub with these tags:

architecture	image:tag
amd64	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server:latest`
arm64v8	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server:latest-arm64v8`

You can start these images directly with docker run with these commands:

docker run --name hbbs --net=host -v "$PWD/data:/root" -d rustdesk/rustdesk-server:latest hbbs -r <relay-server-ip[:port]> 
docker run --name hbbr --net=host -v "$PWD/data:/root" -d rustdesk/rustdesk-server:latest hbbr

or without --net=host, but P2P direct connection can not work.

For systems using SELinux, replacing /root by /root:z is required for the containers to run correctly. Alternatively, SELinux container separation can be disabled completely adding the option --security-opt label=disable.

docker run --name hbbs -p 21115:21115 -p 21116:21116 -p 21116:21116/udp -p 21118:21118 -v "$PWD/data:/root" -d rustdesk/rustdesk-server:latest hbbs -r <relay-server-ip[:port]> 
docker run --name hbbr -p 21117:21117 -p 21119:21119 -v "$PWD/data:/root" -d rustdesk/rustdesk-server:latest hbbr

The relay-server-ip parameter is the IP address (or dns name) of the server running these containers. The optional port parameter has to be used if you use a port different than 21117 for hbbr.

You can also use docker-compose, using this configuration as a template:

version: '3'

networks:
  rustdesk-net:
    external: false

services:
  hbbs:
    container_name: hbbs
    ports:
      - 21115:21115
      - 21116:21116
      - 21116:21116/udp
      - 21118:21118
    image: rustdesk/rustdesk-server:latest
    command: hbbs -r rustdesk.example.com:21117
    volumes:
      - ./data:/root
    networks:
      - rustdesk-net
    depends_on:
      - hbbr
    restart: unless-stopped

  hbbr:
    container_name: hbbr
    ports:
      - 21117:21117
      - 21119:21119
    image: rustdesk/rustdesk-server:latest
    command: hbbr
    volumes:
      - ./data:/root
    networks:
      - rustdesk-net
    restart: unless-stopped

Edit line 16 to point to your relay server (the one listening on port 21117). You can also edit the volume lines (line 18 and line 33) if you need.

(docker-compose credit goes to @lukebarone and @QuiGonLeong)

S6-overlay based images

These images are build against busybox:stable with the addition of the binaries (both hbbr and hbbs) and S6-overlay. They're available on Docker hub with these tags:

architecture	version	image:tag
multiarch	latest	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:latest`
amd64	latest	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:latest-amd64`
i386	latest	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:latest-i386`
arm64v8	latest	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:latest-arm64v8`
armv7	latest	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:latest-armv7`
multiarch	2	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:2`
amd64	2	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:2-amd64`
i386	2	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:2-i386`
arm64v8	2	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:2-arm64v8`
armv7	2	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:2-armv7`
multiarch	2.0.0	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:2.0.0`
amd64	2.0.0	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:2.0.0-amd64`
i386	2.0.0	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:2.0.0-i386`
arm64v8	2.0.0	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:2.0.0-arm64v8`
armv7	2.0.0	`rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:2.0.0-armv7`

You're strongly encouraged to use the multiarch image either with the major version or latest tag.

The S6-overlay acts as a supervisor and keeps both process running, so with this image there's no need to have two separate running containers.

You can start these images directly with docker run with this command:

docker run --name rustdesk-server \ 
  --net=host \
  -e "RELAY=rustdeskrelay.example.com" \
  -e "ENCRYPTED_ONLY=1" \
  -v "$PWD/data:/data" -d rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:latest

or without --net=host, but P2P direct connection cannot work.

docker run --name rustdesk-server \
  -p 21115:21115 -p 21116:21116 -p 21116:21116/udp \
  -p 21117:21117 -p 21118:21118 -p 21119:21119 \
  -e "RELAY=rustdeskrelay.example.com" \
  -e "ENCRYPTED_ONLY=1" \
  -v "$PWD/data:/data" -d rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:latest

Or you can use a docker-compose file:

version: '3'

services:
  rustdesk-server:
    container_name: rustdesk-server
    ports:
      - 21115:21115
      - 21116:21116
      - 21116:21116/udp
      - 21117:21117
      - 21118:21118
      - 21119:21119
    image: rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:latest
    environment:
      - "RELAY=rustdesk.example.com:21117"
      - "ENCRYPTED_ONLY=1"
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
    restart: unless-stopped

For this container image, you can use these environment variables, in addition to the ones specified in the following ENV variables section:

variable	optional	description
RELAY	no	the IP address/DNS name of the machine running this container
ENCRYPTED_ONLY	yes	if set to "1" unencrypted connection will not be accepted
KEY_PUB	yes	public part of the key pair
KEY_PRIV	yes	private part of the key pair

Secret management in S6-overlay based images

You can obviously keep the key pair in a docker volume, but the best practices tells you to not write the keys on the filesystem; so we provide a couple of options.

On container startup, the presence of the keypair is checked (/data/id_ed25519.pub and /data/id_ed25519) and if one of these keys doesn't exist, it's recreated from ENV variables or docker secrets. Then the validity of the keypair is checked: if public and private keys doesn't match, the container will stop. If you provide no keys, hbbs will generate one for you, and it'll place it in the default location.

Use ENV to store the key pair

You can use docker environment variables to store the keys. Just follow this examples:

docker run --name rustdesk-server \ 
  --net=host \
  -e "RELAY=rustdeskrelay.example.com" \
  -e "ENCRYPTED_ONLY=1" \
  -e "DB_URL=/db/db_v2.sqlite3" \
  -e "KEY_PRIV=FR2j78IxfwJNR+HjLluQ2Nh7eEryEeIZCwiQDPVe+PaITKyShphHAsPLn7So0OqRs92nGvSRdFJnE2MSyrKTIQ==" \
  -e "KEY_PUB=iEyskoaYRwLDy5+0qNDqkbPdpxr0kXRSZxNjEsqykyE=" \
  -v "$PWD/db:/db" -d rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:latest

version: '3'

services:
  rustdesk-server:
    container_name: rustdesk-server
    ports:
      - 21115:21115
      - 21116:21116
      - 21116:21116/udp
      - 21117:21117
      - 21118:21118
      - 21119:21119
    image: rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:latest
    environment:
      - "RELAY=rustdesk.example.com:21117"
      - "ENCRYPTED_ONLY=1"
      - "DB_URL=/db/db_v2.sqlite3"
      - "KEY_PRIV=FR2j78IxfwJNR+HjLluQ2Nh7eEryEeIZCwiQDPVe+PaITKyShphHAsPLn7So0OqRs92nGvSRdFJnE2MSyrKTIQ=="
      - "KEY_PUB=iEyskoaYRwLDy5+0qNDqkbPdpxr0kXRSZxNjEsqykyE="
    volumes:
      - ./db:/db
    restart: unless-stopped

Use Docker secrets to store the key pair

You can alternatively use docker secrets to store the keys. This is useful if you're using docker-compose or docker swarm. Just follow this examples:

cat secrets/id_ed25519.pub | docker secret create key_pub -
cat secrets/id_ed25519 | docker secret create key_priv -
docker service create --name rustdesk-server \
  --secret key_priv --secret key_pub \
  --net=host \
  -e "RELAY=rustdeskrelay.example.com" \
  -e "ENCRYPTED_ONLY=1" \
  -e "DB_URL=/db/db_v2.sqlite3" \
  --mount "type=bind,source=$PWD/db,destination=/db" \
  rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:latest

version: '3'

services:
  rustdesk-server:
    container_name: rustdesk-server
    ports:
      - 21115:21115
      - 21116:21116
      - 21116:21116/udp
      - 21117:21117
      - 21118:21118
      - 21119:21119
    image: rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:latest
    environment:
      - "RELAY=rustdesk.example.com:21117"
      - "ENCRYPTED_ONLY=1"
      - "DB_URL=/db/db_v2.sqlite3"
    volumes:
      - ./db:/db
    restart: unless-stopped
    secrets:
      - key_pub
      - key_priv

secrets:
  key_pub:
    file: secrets/id_ed25519.pub
  key_priv:
    file: secrets/id_ed25519

How to create a keypair

A keypair is needed for encryption; you can provide it, as explained before, but you need a way to create one.

You can use this command to generate a keypair:

/usr/bin/rustdesk-utils genkeypair

If you don't have (or don't want) the rustdesk-utils package installed on your system, you can invoke the same command with docker:

docker run --rm --entrypoint /usr/bin/rustdesk-utils  rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:latest genkeypair

The output will be something like this:

Public Key:  8BLLhtzUBU/XKAH4mep3p+IX4DSApe7qbAwNH9nv4yA=
Secret Key:  egAVd44u33ZEUIDTtksGcHeVeAwywarEdHmf99KM5ajwEsuG3NQFT9coAfiZ6nen4hfgNICl7upsDA0f2e/jIA==

.deb packages

Separate .deb packages are available for each binary, you can find them in the releases. These packages are meant for the following distributions:

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Debian 11 bullseye
Debian 10 buster

ENV variables

hbbs and hbbr can be configured using these ENV variables. You can specify the variables as usual or use an .env file.

variable	binary	description
ALWAYS_USE_RELAY	hbbs	if set to "Y" disallows direct peer connection
DB_URL	hbbs	path for database file
DOWNGRADE_START_CHECK	hbbr	delay (in seconds) before downgrade check
DOWNGRADE_THRESHOLD	hbbr	threshold of downgrade check (bit/ms)
KEY	hbbs/hbbr	if set force the use of a specific key, if set to "_" force the use of any key
LIMIT_SPEED	hbbr	speed limit (in Mb/s)
PORT	hbbs/hbbr	listening port (21116 for hbbs - 21117 for hbbr)
RELAY_SERVERS	hbbs	IP address/DNS name of the machines running hbbr (separated by comma)
RUST_LOG	all	set debug level (error\|warn\|info\|debug\|trace)
SINGLE_BANDWIDTH	hbbr	max bandwidth for a single connection (in Mb/s)
TOTAL_BANDWIDTH	hbbr	max total bandwidth (in Mb/s)