MariaDB Database Authentication

The Apache Guacamole install script uses MariaDB as the default means of primary user authentication. When another primary authentication method is selected (like LDAP), the MariaDB database is still used as a means to store user metadata like their permissions in Guacamole, connections assigned to a user, etc.

The Guacamole Documentation on using Database Authentication, specifically the parts regarding MySQL (MariaDB is essentially an open source version of MySQL), can provide more background on how this works.

To be clear, the default, out-of-the-box method of user authentication for a manual install of Guacamole is never used by this script. user-mapping is essentially skipped entirely and is not supported by the script.

The Guacamole installation script handles just about every aspect of setting up MariaDB and database authentication as the primary means of authentication. All user input requested by the prompts is pretty straight forward.

These prompts include:

• Guacamole DB name | This is the name given to the database created for and used by Guacamole. Often the default name is the best choice.
• Guacamole DB username | This is a MariaDB/database user created specifically to interact with the Guacamole database. Often the default name is the best choice.
• Root password for MariaDB | This is simply the password used by the root/admin account for MariaDB which has complete control over everything in MaraDB.
• Guacamole DB password | This is the password specific to the database created for Guacamole.

The above information should be noted in a secure way in the event that a database needs to be manually altered or if the database needs to be updated in the future. For day-to-day use they will not be needed.