noVNC pasting tool

Browser hack that enables pasting text into noNVC consoles using the browser's dev console.

This does not require making any changes on the server whatsoever and is purely ephemeral client-side code.

This tools works by taking text you paste, and typing that text into a console. It doesn't support anything fancy and will only work with characters that can be typed with a keyboard.

Usage

You may use this tool two different ways:

• Paste the code into your browser dev tools console each time it's needed, or:
• Save this tool as a bookmarkable button (a.k.a. bookmarklet), and click that button to show the paste tool whenever it's needed.

One-off use

• Right click the grey gutters on the side of your noVNC page.
• Click Inspect.
• Click the Console tab.
• Open paste-tool.js in this repo, and copy its contents into the Console tab. Press enter.
• The paste tool window shows up.

Saving as a bookmarklet

You may turn this into an easy-to-click button by saving the actual JavaScript as a bookmark:

• In your browser, enable your bookmarks bar.
• Open bookmarklet.js and copy its contents.
• Right click your bookmarks bar, click Add page... (Chrome) or Add Bookmark... (Firefox).
  • In the Name field, enter noVNC paste tool (or any other name you want).
  • In the URL field, paste the contents of bookmarklet.js.
  • Click Save.

You should now have a button that can be clicked any time to show the paste tool:

Pasting text

Do not use Ctrl+V. The KVM console steals input, and the quickest way to prevent catastrophic problems was to outright disable all input while the text box is selected. Instead, use the mouse.

Note that, the KVM console also steals mouse input if you right click while the mouse is over the VM screen. Instead, make sure your mouse is over the grey area when right clicking inside the text box. You might need to resize your window to see the grey gutters.

Notes and caveats

Stopping a paste

You may notice pastes are slow. This is by design (see per-key delay below). The script currently does not have a stop button; close the KVM tab to stop a paste tab. This will stop all JS on the page, including the paste.

VIM

When pasting into Vim, note that some setups will do perform unwanted actions (such as auto-indenting when enter is pressed). The solution for Vim is first to run:

:set paste

This will change -- INSERT -- to -- INSERT (paste) -- and yield better results.

Per-key delay

This value exists because pasting too fast causes the console to receive text out of order. 100 is conservative, you may want to increase this value on very slow connections.

Ignored characters

\r is completely ignored. \n is used instead because all (modern) systems use it in text files. The KVM console expects an actual keyboard key though, so \n is converted into an enter key signal before it's sent to the console.

Note also that, because the console expects a keyboard button, things like ! do not actually exist. This script will, in this exact example, instead hold Shift and then press 1. I'm unsure at this stage if that will cause internationalisation problems.