Grist-desktop portable on Windows

1

Dear all,
I am forced to use grist-desktop on Windows in its portable version (grist-desktop-windows-portable-0.2.10-x64.exe) and noted the two followin issues:

  1. startup is very slow compared to the standard installed version (grist-desktop-windows-installer-0.2.10-x64)
  2. the app seems not to be reachable at http://localhost:47478/ and the Self Check in the admin panel reports “FetchError: maximum redirect reached at: http://localhost:47478/electron_only”

(btw. also the installed version is not reachable and reports the same error)

Any ideas how these issues may be resolved?
Thanks!

2

Hi there and welcome to the community!

The slow startup is because the portable version must unpack itself first.

The Self Check error you see in the Admin Panel is because the default authentication mode is set to ‘strict’, preventing access outside of Electron. You could set the environmental variable GRIST_DESKTOP_AUTH to mixed or none to unblock the API.

Thanks!
Natalie

3

Dear Natalie,
thanks a lot for the reply! Indeed setting GRIST_DESKTOP_AUTH made grist reachable.
Next question would be if it possible to make gris-desktop available through login. Is it written somewhere in the documentation ? (if it applies to the desktop version).
Thanks!
Pier

PS: I dont have security concerns inside the local network and all users will work on the same shared documents.

4

It is not possible. Desktop Grist does not use logins. By default, you have a generic login (you@example.com). If you want to run something local, with the ability to have multiple user logins, I would recommend self-managed Grist.

Thanks!
Natalie

5

Thanks again! Is it possible for the user connecting from a browser to also be “you@example.com” so that he can use the same documents as the user who launched grist-desktop? I know that using the self-managed version would make everything much easier but in my scenario users don’t have admin rights and only the portable version can be used.

6

Hello,

You can set GRIST_DESKTOP_AUTH to none. That makes everyone login as “You”.

If you are willing to spend some time figuring it out, Node.js has “prebuilt binaries” and Python has “embedded packages” for download, so you don’t need Windows admin rights to build grist-core from source and run it locally. We will consider making this process easier.

7

Do you mean that I must set GRIST_DESKTOP_AUTH=none in the machine which connects via the browser and GRIST_DESKTOP_AUTH=mixed on the machine executing grist-desktop?
If I set GRIST_DESKTOP_AUTH=none on the machine executing grist-desktop then API is blocked (contrary to what you wrote in your first reply, wheres with mixed it is unblocked)
Any clues?
Thanks again

8

You must set GRIST_DESKTOP_AUTH=none on the machine where you launch Grist Desktop. The API is reachable (did you try curl localhost:47478/api/orgs?) even if the admin panel says unreachable (which is a glitch we will fix in the future).

Only strict would disable API access.

9

Where exactly do we set such variables?
I’m using Grist-Desktop on macOS (if that makes any difference).
I’m a bit puzzled.

m