iphone charging stops with view 4.5

[RobBuxton]

Hi All,

We have just upgraded our View infrastructure to 4.5 and that has included the View Agents.

We have some Wyse P20's and Samsung NC240's PCoIP devices. Prior to the 4.5 upgrade iPhones could be charged from these devices. Now they cannot.

Interestingly the charging works when the screen is powered on and before it is connected to a View Agent. As soon as a connection is made to a desktop the iphone can no longer be charged.

I have tried using PCoIP FW 3.1.2 and 3.2.0. The result is the same.

This was working with View 4.0.1.

Anyone seen similar?

TIA Rob.

[RobBuxton]

Bump - so is no one charging iPhones (or similar smaprt phones) from thin clients?

Or does this work okay in your environment? If all is working as expected in a 4.5 environment I'd be keen to hear of that as well.

Thanks, Rob.

[pauljawood]

Hi,

Just a quick question but have the USB ports been disabled with in View after moving to 4.5. The only reason I ask this is that if it was working before and also works before you are connected then its not the USB device on your terminal but sounds like its being blocked once you are connected.

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If you found this helpful then please leave some points.

[RobBuxton]

Thanks,

Other USB devices work as expected - although I may now retest what I see happening a bit more thoroughly.

If I log on from the PCoIP device but use RDP as the protocol charging works as expected.

The Wyse P20's have a green light that comes on when the PCoIP session has been established. This comes on as soon as the session is established and well before logon is complete. Charging stops as soon as the PCoIP session is established / light comes on.

There is a call open with Vmware, but they've not been able to replicate the issue. It works for them.

Rob.

[RobBuxton]

Oddly enough, USB is not working via an RDP connection, but does work for PCoIP connections.

Tested using several desktop sources, mainly XP, but also a Windows 7 desktop. All results are consistent.

Built a new Replica server and used that, results were the same.

RDP connections from non-PCoIP devices (Wyse V10L's) also fail the USB tests.

[wojtow · Accepted solution]

Excellent question.   I was pretty sure I had tested this during my evaluation of PCoIP and charging worked.  But then after we got it installed (and had since upgraded to 4.5), it no longer worked and I was wondering if it ever did work or was I just imagining it. But your post told me that it's true.

It seems that as long as View isn't in control it works, so I know it had something to do with view.  In the log file in:

c:\Program Data\VMware\VDM\pcoip_server*.txt   (Win 7 location)

I found this after connecting the phone:

12/15/2010, 16:15:40.984> LVL:2 RC:   0        SOFT_USB :VID:0x05ac, PID:0x1294, connected
12/15/2010, 16:15:40.984> LVL:2 RC:   0        SOFT_USB :softusb_plugin_device device_id 1 desc_len 57
....
12/15/2010, 16:15:40.984> LVL:2 RC:   0        SOFT_USB :softusb_plugin_device: Blocking VID_05AC&PID_1294 (addr 1)

I recognized this as the vendor id of my iPhone as I was just observing it in the PCoIP hardware device info list.  So, this told me it was being

actively blocked.

I poked around in the registry and found:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMware VDM\USB\HardwareIDFilers

Here's the whole list of blocked devices (apparently the default list).

VID_0FCA&PID_8004 # RIM / Blackberry
VID_08F0&PID_0005  # Corex Tehcnologies / ?
VID_05AC&PID_1293 # Apple / iPod Touch 2.Gen
VID_046D&PID_08AF # Logitech / Quickcam Easy/Cool
VID_04a9&PID_1736  # Canon / ?
VID_04a9&PID_1737  # Canon / ?
VID_04a9&PID_1741  # Canon / ?
VID_03F0&PID_2A12  # HP / some model of printer
VID_05AC&PID_129A  # Apple / iPad
VID_05AC&PID_1294 # Apple / iPhone 3GS
VID_05AC&PID_1290 # Apple / iPhone

I looked up the vendor and device codes. The # and following are not part of the settings.

I'm not sure why these specifc devices are listed.  Some, like the Blackberry one, are pretty broad, and others only refer to specific devices.   Its likely that some of these devices either just don't work, or more likely cause some sort of problem or crash.  There's a reference to this registry key in the following KB: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1011600  but not really a complete explanation.

Anyway, I took out the one for the iPhone 3GS, and after logging out and connecting to a new session, I have the charging symbol on my iPhone again!!

Use with caution as I'm sure there's a good reason for some of these devices being on the list.

Hope this helps someone.

P.S. This doesn't mean that sync and other feature work (haven't tested).  It just means that you can charge it.

[RobBuxton]

Many thanks, that does indeed work, and yes I read the caution note at the end.

My understanding is that View 4.6 (or whatever is after 4.5) will contain isochronous USB support so that should mean all of the sync stuff will work as well.

Be interesting to look at the registry after the update and see what's still excluded!

[wojtow]

UPDATE:   View 5 only lists one device (one certain ill-behaved model of Logictech webcam: "Easy/Cool")

[Linjo]

Those devices are blacklisted for a reason, they caused problems and did not work properly during our testing.

In View5 we have fixed many of those and that is why only one is listed.

// Linjo

[wojtow]

@linjo, thanks for the info.  I figured there was a reason, but I really  needed to be able to keep my phone charged, and have had no problems whatsoever having  unblacklisted it and using it just for charging over the last 10 months.

its not on my daily-driver desktop yet, but am testing View 5, and am happy to report that both iPhone and Blackberry charging and storage access both "just work"  (at least on our Windows 7 install)