vnc access to guest vm

[snocrossgjd]

Hello All,

I have configured several virtual machines with vnc:

remotedisplay.vnc.port="5901"

remotedisplay.vnc.enabled="true"

remotedisplay.vnc.password = "secret"

This works great, however from my workstation when connecting via vnc to the guest, I cannot copy from my machine to the guest or vice versa. Is this a known issue, or is there something I am missing?

Thank you very much,

Gregory Durham

[snocrossgjd]

Is the question too vague? By Copy and paste, I mean text, in the case that that was too vague....

[wila]

Hello Gregory,

It's a tad bit vague yes. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that the clipboard integration you are after is depending on the product that you are using on your workstation to connect to your virtual machines.

FWIW, I just tried it here with one of my guests while connecting from OS X and it worked for me (well OK just one way, I could copy text in my guest and paste it in OS X)

So the question is what is the product that you use for VNC? RealVNC as well as ZoomVNC claim to have clipboard integration support.

--
Wil
_____________________________________________________
VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

Contributing author at blog www.planetvm.net

Twitter: @wilva

[snocrossgjd]

Hello Wil,

Thank you for contacting me regarding this. Here is my setup:

ESXi 4 server with some virtual machines.

In each Virtual Machine VMX file I have added something similar to:

remotedisplay.vnc.port="5901"

remotedisplay.vnc.enabled="true"

remotedisplay.vnc.password = "secret"

The only thing that changes is the vnc.port as each is unique.

From my local desktop I connect to the esxi server's I.P.address with realvnc's viewer on port 5901 in order to access the virtual monitor of this particular Virtual machine (note that I do not have vncserver installed in any virtual machine, this is all through esxi). I attempt to copy text from the virtual machine (i.e. open notepad in windows and type something) and attempt to paste it to my desktop's notepad or whatever else, this fails, and so does the other direction. Do you or anyone else have a sample vmx file that allows them to do this? Again thank you very much for messaging me, it really means alot!

Thanks!

Gregory Durham

[J1mbo]

Is there something preventing using RDP to the guests?

http://blog.peacon.co.uk

Please award points to any useful answer.

[snocrossgjd]

Unfortunately yes, each vm is setup with vpn software to connect to various sites and multiple people use these vms. The VPN software is configured to block out all ports and so what we have divised is to access it from the virtual monitor via vnc. However, without copy and paste we are dead in the water, and I need to find another solution which may be with another product. I was just hoping that wouldnt be what has to happen as I love esxi, and have been using it for the last couple of years.

Thanks!

Greg

[J1mbo]

Perhaps you could add another vNIC to the VMs on "your" network, then use mstsc /admin to get to the console that way. Obviously that might raise some security concerns.

http://blog.peacon.co.uk

Please award points to any useful answer.

[wila]

Hello Gregory,

Your vmx file looks OK. Mine is similar except that I use the vnc.key field instead of the vnc.password one.

I do not think that that will make a difference though. What might make a difference is if you have vmware tools installed and running.

What guest OS are you running on ESXi? You mention using notepad, so I'm guessing it is windows?

If RealVNC doesn't work with clipboard integration, then you could try another vnc product. I really do think it is the vnc viewer app here that provides the main mechanism for clipboard exchange.

--
Wil
_____________________________________________________
VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

Contributing author at blog www.planetvm.net

Twitter: @wilva

[snocrossgjd]

Hello wil,

Unfortunately, Windows are the primary vms we are running in this environment. I have vmware tools installed and I have just tested with tightvnc and it has the same problem. Later I will try with a mac, and see if I have the same problem, if so, it has to be my vmx file. I will also try updating the vmware tools install and see if that fixes anything. Have you made any other changes to the vmx file other than the stuff to add the vnc info?

Thanks again,

Greg

[wila]

Hmm..it should not matter if you are connecting from a Mac (I used Chicken of the VNC) or a windows desktop.

One other difference between our setups is that i used ESX3.5 and not ESXi4 as that was the only host I had access to when I tested this.

But that should also not make any difference.

The vmx file is plain jane for the rest, there's no specific settings in there to make this work.

--
Wil
_____________________________________________________
VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

Contributing author at blog www.planetvm.net

Twitter: @wilva