Getting started

[noah-de]

Greetings!
Thank you for making this great tool.
We have high hopes for using it but are having a tough time getting started.

A few passes through https://cmu-sei.github.io/GHOSTS/ and some other locations helped me figure out how to get the API running, but I was at a loss for the client.

I was glad to have found some clues in past issues.
#352

Could I help by writing documentation to make this process even easier for folks?

[sei-dupdyke]

Testing this all morning — there are definitely issues with Ubuntu 24.04. It seems to be related to Firefox being snap installed. I am getting "xpcomglueload" errors that it couldn't load "XPCOM".

It's been a while since we've used/tested on Ubuntu. I'll have to dig into these errors further, but it does not seem to be a super easy fix that I can post up this morning, sorry.

[sei-dupdyke]

Any pull requests on documentation are always greatly appreciated! 🤜 🤛

[noah-de]

Testing this all morning — there are definitely issues with Ubuntu 24.04. It seems to be related to Firefox being snap installed. I am getting "xpcomglueload" errors that it couldn't load "XPCOM".

It's been a while since we've used/tested on Ubuntu. I'll have to dig into these errors further, but it does not seem to be a super easy fix that I can post up this morning, sorry.

Sorry, I should have been clearer in my reference to a closed issue.

I was grateful to find that a recent issue had a screenshot that indicated how to launch the client on Ubuntu.
The link was there to show that I had found documentation in the closed issues.

Assuming there would be issues with 24.04, I wrangling with 22.04 for now.

This looks like GHOSTS could be a great addition to our cyber range.
I will gladly write some documentation via a pull request.

[sei-dupdyke]

Okay, whew, good to hear.

But I'm going to leave this issue open due to issues that I do see on 24.04. I assume they are related to Firefox being installed via snap and/or permissions that I noted above.

[dh4340]

@noah-de It looks like you've made some progress on resolving your issues. However, if you're encountering problems with Firefox on Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04, this might be related to a known issue with Firefox packaged inside a container (as is the case with the default browser in these versions of Ubuntu).

When Firefox runs in a container, it might see a different filesystem than the host, which can affect access to the generated profile directory. This can cause Firefox to hang during startup. You can find workarounds in the geckodriver usage documentation.

Additionally, I've rewritten the guide for Linux Clients. It now includes instructions for running Firefox as a service, which simplifies handling environment variables and ensures Firefox loads on boot. It also addresses the DISPLAY error in Ubuntu 22.04/24.04. When running as a service, you can pass the following environment variables to fix the issue:

Environment=DOTNET_CLI_TELEMETRY_OPTOUT=1
Environment=DISPLAY=:0

Let me know if you need further help!

[noah-de]

Thanks @dh4340, I appreciate your writeup.
Your documentation looks a lot like what we ended up doing.
Our use case had additional constraints that made our deployment unconventional, so I hesitated to write up our use case because it might confuse the new users of GHOSTS.

[sei-dupdyke]

Thanks all - there are several ubuntu-related issues open currently. I hope to attack them in one main frontal assault — soon.