Run the whole thing on your own box — the workspace, the database and the relay. Nothing leaves your network unless you allow it.
Chat, files, projects, tracked hours and work-diary screenshots live in a SQLite file on your server. Take a copy whenever you like; it is one file.
A Node.js server (signalling + workspace API + admin panel) and a coturn STUN/TURN relay. Both run comfortably on a 1 vCPU VPS.
Point the desktop and Android apps at your server URL — no separate build, no fork, no per-seat call home.
One Node process does four jobs, so there is one thing to keep alive rather than four:
Introduces two devices to each other by their 9-digit IDs and gets out of the way. Screens, keystrokes, files and meeting media then travel directly between the peers, encrypted with DTLS-SRTP. The server cannot read them and never stores them.
Accounts, chat, uploads, projects and tasks, meetings, WorkTrack hours, timesheets and invoices. This is the part that is stored — on your disk, so history and search work from any device.
At /admin, behind a token. Workspaces and their plans, accounts, licence keys, installer download counts, and the ability to block a specific machine.
Drop your builds into the data directory and the server serves and counts them at /download/win, /mac, /linux and /android. No third-party analytics needed to answer “how many downloads?”.
On a fresh Ubuntu server with Node.js 18+ installed:
# 1. the server
git clone https://example.com/remotedesk.git
cd remotedesk/server
npm install # builds better-sqlite3 for THIS machine
export RD_DATA_DIR=/var/lib/officedesk
export RD_LICENSE_SECRET="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" # keep this; it signs licence keys
export RD_ADMIN_TOKEN="$(openssl rand -hex 24)" # unset = /admin stays off
export RD_PUBLIC_URL=https://desk.example.com
node signaling.js # listens on :9000
# 2. STUN + TURN relay (coturn)
sudo apt install coturn
sudo nano /etc/turnserver.conf # realm, static-auth-secret, external-ip
sudo systemctl enable --now coturn
# 3. point the clients at your server
# Settings -> Server URL
wss://desk.example.comThe database is created and migrated automatically on first start — there is no separate schema step. Upgrading is the same command; pending migrations run at boot.
One thing to get right when you deploy: build node_modules on the server. better-sqlite3 is a native module, so copying a Windows or macOS node_modules to a Linux box gives you a process that exits before it ever listens.
| Service | Port | Protocol |
|---|---|---|
| Signalling + API + admin | 9000 (443 via proxy) | TCP / TLS |
| STUN & TURN | 3478 | TCP + UDP |
| TURN over TLS | 5349 | TCP |
| TURN relay range | 49152-65535 | UDP |
Run coturn and you also get your own STUN. The apps do not need a public STUN service, so no address discovery goes to a third party.
| Variable | What it does |
|---|---|
RD_DATA_DIR | Database, uploads, installers |
RD_LICENSE_SECRET | Signs licence keys — unset means they die on restart |
RD_ADMIN_TOKEN | Unlocks /admin; unset keeps it off |
RD_TURN_SECRET | Must match coturn’s static-auth-secret |
RD_PUBLIC_URL | Base URL used in invite links |
RD_WORKSPACE_TRIAL_DAYS | Workspace trial length (default 7) |
PORT / HOST | Default 9000 / 0.0.0.0 |
RD_DATA_DIR. That single directory is your entire workspace.Self-hosting is the deployment we recommend to anyone with a confidentiality obligation to their own clients — and to anyone enabling WorkTrack, since employee monitoring data is far easier to defend when it never left your building.
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