VMware Horizon Community
waynej
Contributor
Contributor

Persona Management sync issues for certain files/folders (broken pinned icons)

I recently noticed that users who logged off too quickly from a linked clone pool after their first session would be greeted by white/blank icons for the default pinned applications on the task bar.  The result from the user perspective is similar/identical to:

Broken pinned icons

Re: Windows 7 Quick Launch Error WEIRD

http://vmtoday.com/2013/01/blank-quicklaunch-icons-on-view-desktop/

However, the details are slightly different and the fixes are already in place. 

Brief background on the setup:  I am using Horizon View 5.2 w/ FP2.  The ViewPM.ADM template is attached to the GPO and the "Rom local settings folders" option is enabled.  The Profile upload interval was 10 minutes but was reduced to 5 minutes for testing.  Profile folders are shared/permissioned properly and this seems to be a failure with the persona management software on the pool VM as the data will eventually be uploaded if the user does not log out before the first (possibly second) sync.  The pool is set to refresh immediately after logoff.  Client Side Caching is disabled so KB2016416 should not apply.  The pool was creating using the deployment guide and the provided scripts from VMware, etc.  However, the client firewall was re-enabled so HTML Access in Feature Pack 2 will work. 

To test I used an affected pool and deleted my existing profile on the file server.  After logging in to the pool VM, the username.V2 folder was created in the Persona repository share.  At this point, the folder is blank.  The VM works as expected without problems.  If I examine the local profile in the VM, all of the folders and files affected by this issue exist (C:\users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick launch). 

I let 5 minutes pass and Persona Management does an initial sync creating what looks to be a full sync.  However, if I examine the "\\server\share\username.V2\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\" folder, it only contains desktop.ini and two shortcuts ('Show desktop' and 'Switch between windows').  Missing are the actual shortcuts for the pinned items and a few other folders ("User Pinned" and "User Pinned\TaskBar") including more shortcuts. 

If I let 5 more minutes pass for another sync, the missing files will appear.  At this point if I log off, all is well (unless there are other files that PM fails to copy).  Running "openfiles /query /v" on the file server shows more files being sync'd during logoff. 

If I log off before all of the files are successfully synchronized, the next time I log on I'll be greeted with white icons for the pinned programs. 

Version 5.1.1 claimed to have resolved a problem similar to this when a pool was set to refresh immediately, so perhaps there is yet another related bug?

I have opened a support case but posting here in case anyone else has experienced and resolved this issue. 

17 Replies
kjennern
Contributor
Contributor

We have the same issue with View Horizon 5.2 and floating pool. We have also created a support case on this. Still no fix, but we did a workaround by changing sync time to 1 minute.

Still waiting for VMware Support on this one.

waynej
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the response.  I have also set my sync time to 1 minute to help mitigate the issue. 

While the broken pinned icons are easily fixed by copying the folder structure to the affected persona profile (or deleting the profile and starting fresh for the user), I worry that there are more files in the local profile that the persona management agent is failing to sync with the repository profile. 

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HIsgett
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I am seeing this as well and it is happening in our computer lab where users will login for a few minutes, do something, and then log off before the 10 minute sync time runs. Frustrating.

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KS1980
Contributor
Contributor

Any updates on this issue?  I am experiencing the same issue with taskbar and startmenu icons.

Unable to pin icons to taskbar using Persona Management

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cH1LL1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

We are also experiencing the same issue

view 5.1.1, sync time now 1 minute. updated all agents to 5.3.0 to see if any improvement.

to resolve for the user we have to copy the data from "previous Version" back in to the newly created profile.

We also have a support case open on this and are currently making progress uploading Logs etc.

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kjennern
Contributor
Contributor

We have upgraded to 5.3 with same result. Have had an ongoing support case with no luck. Kept sending logs twice a week and we just gave up..

So ended up with sync time at 1 minute, and made sure users stay connected at least 2-3 minutes at first logon.

After Persona Management syncs the profile more than 2 times its correctly synced.

After that no issue, but this is clearly something VMware should address more at there engineer level.

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peterbrown05
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

sorry to hear you haven't had much of a response. Let me look into it for you. Do you happen to have the SR or any sort of reference number handy? That would help me locate it in the system,

cheers

peterB

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waynej
Contributor
Contributor

My original SR is 13366286308.  Before the ticket was closed in December I was told it was a bug.

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peterbrown05
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

thanks for the ticket number. Let me look into it for you and see what can be done.

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mougT
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I realize this is an old thread, but I was wandering if any solution was ever found? We are experiencing the same issue. One pool is running Windows 7, and the other Windows 8.1. Both pools are floating linked clones with Horizon View 6.0.

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p3000
Contributor
Contributor

This issue is soooo old an we are on Version 6 now and it still persists... this is frustrating. And no reaction. Sad. We will open a support request.

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peterbrown05
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

sorry to hear that this issue persists for you. We have dealt with several customers seeing this problem, and in most cases its down to some sort of configuration issue.

Also, the root cause often differs between customers. I would suggest in this case that we need to open a new ticket and get some logs, and we will help investigate.

The result won't likely be a general fix all for everyone on this thread, given that often the root cause can vary.

Anyway, please help to provide some logs (and open a ticket ideally) and we can work with you to solve this.

Once you open the ticket please ping back here with the ticket number so I can take a look,

cheers

peterB

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cH1LL1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

We are still experiencing this:

several items were pinpointed as bad config in our environment which were highlighted and addressed accordingly.

However we were reaching the point that further steps were too intrusive for the users or to the pools our users were in,,So we stopped there for the time being,

My old case number is 14464568104 -  We are certain that the corruption is happening on the log off.

some info in this case may help others.

( I must admit VMware was very helpful throughout the troubleshooting process)

We plan to now move our users over to server 2012 R2 profile servers with active passive DFS. and closest site referral.

will report back on how that goes.

Regards

-cHiLLi-

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Jbir
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

We have seen several problems with persona management and Windows 8.1. In particular the broken/blank pinned icons. I also had a problem where right-clicking the start button was broken too but this has been fixed by a windows update. After reading this thread I have decreased the profile upload interval to 1 minute and this seems to have fixed it.

Our setup (Horizon Enterprise 6) is still only in the pilot phase with very few users. I am a little concerned about having lots of users logging into desktops and them all synchronising their profiles every minute. Will this cause performance issues for the users?

Regards

Janine

cH1LL1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Very good question ......

We were lead to believe that this would have no impact either.

We changed it from 10  to 1 and we did see a drastic difference in I/O throughput to the back end storage as well as users report performance problems.

Howver this is purely determined by how much headroom you have, You may not see a problem at all but if you are running your pilot on a staging set of disks then you may feel this issue.

It might be a good idea that your Storage Team  give you a baseline of your current throughput then slowly ramp up that GPO from 10 to 1. meanwhile your storage team give you stats on the effect it is having.

Just out of interest we stopped at 5 minutes.

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Jbir
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

We are the storage team too so are able to keep an eye on it. The desktops are running on Tintri fast storage but the persona server is running on a DELL Equallogic with a mixture of SAS and SSD cache disks. We have only 3 or 4 users at the moment so all looks good but as we add more users we may have to increase the persona upload interval. I imagine this problem is more of a problem for us at the moment as we are logging in and out testing stuff and so this is why we weren't hitting the 10 minute upload. Once people are using the desktops as their dedicated desktop they won't be logging out so quick so hopefully won't see the problem as much if we have to increase, or maybe VMware will have fixed it by then.

VMware told me they were working on a public facing kb to explain the issue and they were working on a fix but this wouldn't be released until next version of horizon.

Janine

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terranaut
Contributor
Contributor

After upgrading View Agents 5.3.3 to 6.1.0, the described problem with Persona Management sync still persisted (...broken pinned icons..., %APPDATA%\Roaming\Microsoft incompletely synced, ...)

This solution worked for us...

Have a look at the logs and search Persona Management Log (c:\ProgramData\VMware\VDM\logs\VMWVvp.txt) for Error Codes...

0xD0000022 (should look like [VMWCreateDirectory] Failed Setting Folder Times:......)

0x80070003 (should look like [CFileInfo::Open] Failed Opening File: \\?\UNC...) or

You should find there a path...in my case, the folder %APPDATA%\Roaming\Thinstall\...... has been shown beeing unable to be synced to our central Persona Profile Location.

After deleting the path %APPDATA%\Roaming\Thinstall within affected User's WINDOWS-Profile on VM (possibly you will also find there orphaned ThinApp Data installed in past),

the replication finished correctly after a few minutes (depends on defined Sync-Interval in GPO).

! Before deleting Thinstall folder, temporarily remove Thinapps from VM via View Manager and wait a few minutes before deleting Thinstall folder (Save data of currently installed ThinApps for later recovery)!!!

I've tested this workaround for several affected users and it look like the Thinstall-Folder was the root cause for the Sync Issue as described. Another way (not yet tested) could be an Exclude-Statement in GPO for Thinstall-Directory.

Hope this helps to resolve your issue...

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