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mirror/README.md
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ducoterra 7d4bcf7e23 fix(kiosk): stop GDM covering the wall with a greeter after auto-login
Auto-login succeeded and the wall kept streaming, but about ten seconds
after the kiosk session came up GDM autospawned a greeter on the same GPU
and a login screen covered it. gnome-kiosk ships X-GDM-SessionRegisters=false,
so nothing ever registers and GDM concludes the display is still free — which
is why every remote check (loginctl, the mirror roster) stayed green while
the physical screen showed a password prompt.

Override that session file with the flag set to true, keeping the file name
and session id identical: inventing an id makes GDM quietly fall back to the
plain GNOME session, top bar and all.

Add a per-minute guard that reclaims the foreground VT, because this class
of failure is invisible from the outside, and have the checker assert both
the foreground VT and the greeter-session count. That count had a silent
false green: journalctl has no --no-legend, so the check read an empty
stream and passed unconditionally.

Also keep a copy of the payload in /usr/local/share/mirror-kiosk. /tmp is
cleared at every boot, which deletes the checker just after the one event
you are most likely to want to re-run it for.

Verified on the reference client: a cold boot now creates no greeter session
at all, the kiosk compositor and Firefox come up undisturbed, and a console
stolen with chvt is taken back within a minute.

LLM-Generated: true
2026-11-01 19:46:17 -05:00

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# mirror
**Device-agnostic screen mirroring that lives entirely in the browser.**
`mirror` runs a small HTTP server on your machine. Open it from any device on
your network:
| Page | URL | What it does |
| ------------ | ------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Share** | `/mirror` | Picks a window, screen, or tab via the OS-native picker and mirrors it. |
| **Watch** | `/watch` | Shows every screen currently being mirrored; click a tile to take the stage. |
| **Index** | `/` | Signpost + live count of mirrors. |
Any number of people can mirror at the same time and any number of people can
watch. There are **no accounts and no passwords** — this is built for a trusted
local network, and that assumption is deliberate and documented in
[SECURITY.md](SECURITY.md). What *does* decide who gets in is the source address:
by default any address is welcome, and `--allow-cidr` / `MIRROR_ALLOW_CIDRS`
narrows that to the networks you name.
## Quickstart
```bash
uv sync --extra dev
uv run mirror serve # http://0.0.0.0:8055
```
Then, from another machine on the LAN:
```
http://<this-machine>:8055/mirror # to share
http://<this-machine>:8055/watch # to watch
```
Linux is the primary target. On Linux the native picker is X11/Wayland's own
(Chromium uses `xdg-desktop-portal` on Wayland/GNOME/KDE, and its built-in X11
picker on Xorg), so nothing has to be installed on the client side.
The target *client* setup for an always-on display is Fedora Silverblue running
GNOME Kiosk — see [`docs/kiosk-silverblue.md`](docs/kiosk-silverblue.md).
## How it works
Media never touches the server. Each mirror is a WebRTC peer connection
established directly between the sharer's browser and each watcher's browser
(a "mesh" fan-out). The server is a **signaling relay and roster only**: it
tracks who is publishing what, forwards SDP/ICE between peers, and pushes
roster deltas to viewers.
```
sharer browser ──ws──► ┌──────────────────────┐ ◄──ws── watcher browser
│ │ FastAPI │ ▲
│ offer/ICE ───►│ /ws (signalling) │◄─── offer/ICE │
│ │ registry (in-mem) │ │
└────── WebRTC (SRTP, LAN, p2p) ─────────┴─────────────────┘
```
## Configuration
Environment variables (all optional; a `.env` file is loaded if present):
| Variable | Default | Meaning |
| ---------------------- | ------- | ---------------------------------------------------- |
| `MIRROR_HOST` | `0.0.0.0` | Bind address for `mirror serve`. |
| `MIRROR_PORT` | `8055` | Bind port. |
| `MIRROR_ICE_SERVERS` | `[]` | JSON array of RTCIceServer objects, if peers cannot reach each other directly. |
| `MIRROR_MAX_MIRRORS` | `0` | Cap on concurrent mirrors (`0` = unlimited). |
| `MIRROR_ALLOW_CIDRS` | *(unset)* | Comma-separated source networks allowed to connect, e.g. `10.2.0.0/22,fd00::/64`. Unset means unrestricted. |
| `MIRROR_TRUSTED_PROXIES` | `127.0.0.0/8, ::1/128` | Which peers may speak for a client via `X-Forwarded-For`. Only a proxy that overwrites the header belongs here. |
| `DEBUGPY` | `0` | `1` opens a debugpy listener on `DEBUGPY_PORT`. |
| `DEBUGPY_PORT` | `5678` | debugpy port. |
## Platform notes
**Screen capture needs a secure context.** `http://localhost` is one; a plain
`http://192.168.x.x` opened from another device is not, and the browser hides
`getDisplayMedia()` completely. The `/mirror` page detects this and prints the
three ways forward (share from localhost, serve HTTPS, or mark that one origin as
secure on the sharing device). Watching never needs permission.
This is why the fleet deployment terminates TLS in nginx rather than exposing
`mirror serve` directly — over `https://`, every device on the network can share
and none of this applies. A bare `mirror serve` is for the machine it runs on and
for testing.
**Linux.** On X11/Xorg Chromium uses its native capturer — the picker appears and
that is the end of it. On Wayland (GNOME/KDE) Chromium goes through
`xdg-desktop-portal`, so the compositor shows its **own permission dialog for
each share**, which mirror neither controls nor tries to bypass. Chrome's picker
offers whole screens and individual windows; on Wayland what the portal will
agree to depends on the compositor.
## Deployment
The internal deployment is `https://mirror.reeseapps.com`, described and automated
in the deployments repo under `mirror/` (`app/` quadlet, `nginx/` edge, `certbot/`,
`route53/`, and a README with the VM SOP). Three things about it are worth knowing
from this side:
- **TLS ends at nginx on the service VM**, not in this process, so there is no
`--https` flag here. That is what makes `getDisplayMedia()` available on every
device, and it means an `Upgrade` header and a long idle timeout on `/ws` are
load-bearing.
- **The address list is enforced twice** — nginx `allow`/`deny`, and
`MIRROR_ALLOW_CIDRS` in the container for the path that bypasses nginx. Change
both in one commit.
- **The container has no internet egress.** Media goes browser-to-browser and the
server only relays JSON, so it dials nothing; `Internal=true` is what makes
that a fact rather than an intention.
### Kiosk client
A wall display is a Fedora Silverblue box running the locked-down GNOME Kiosk
session, auto-logged in as `kiosk`, with Firefox in `--kiosk` mode pointed at
`/watch`. It is set up and repaired entirely over SSH — no keyboard, no console,
no monitor:
```bash
scp -r docs/kiosk-silverblue client:/var/tmp/ && ssh client \
'cd /var/tmp/kiosk-silverblue && sudo sh install-kiosk.sh && sudo systemctl restart gdm'
ssh client 'sudo sh /usr/local/share/mirror-kiosk/check-kiosk.sh'
```
Because nobody is standing at the machine, every claim about it is verified from
the outside: `loginctl` for the session, the foreground VT for "is the wall
actually on screen", the server's `/api/streams` for the viewer, the sharer's own
peer state for the media, and a probe page for the rendered resolution. The
runbook records why each file lives where it does on an
otherwise read-only OS.
## Development
```bash
uv run pytest # unit + API + browser E2E (~20s)
uv run pytest -m "not e2e" # everything except the browser (~0.5s)
uv run ruff check . && uv run ruff format --check . && uv run pyright
```
The browser suite drives **real capture**: Chromium's fake media device yields a
moving 1280×720 monitor stream, so the assertions are on decoded, changing pixels
at the watcher — not on log lines.
There is a second, opt-in rung that exercises Chromium's **real X11 capture
backend** on a private Xvfb display, isolated from your own session so it can
never prompt you or mirror your desktop:
```bash
MIRROR_REALDISPLAY=1 uv run pytest -m realdisplay
```
See [AGENTS.md](AGENTS.md) for the operating rules,
[.agents/PLAN.md](.agents/PLAN.md) for the locked architectural decisions, and
[SECURITY.md](SECURITY.md) for why there is no login.