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Seth9
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Connecting to Linux Desktop

Hello,

I just got manual Linux desktop pool up and running based on the provided documentation and youtube video that got posted a few weeks back. I'm running RHEL 6.6 with the latest View software installed.

At first I connected via a web browser to the Linux desktop pool and able to connect without any issue.  My only complaint is that the desktop does not resize to the current browser size.  The current maximum resolution is 1280x768.

I also tried to connect from a Windows View Client and Tera2 zero client but without any success.  The error message that I'm getting is "This desktop does not support the requested display protocol".

Any help is much appreciated.

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Seth9
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Found the issue.  My http load balancer was messing with the traffic between the client and Linux host.  With the load balancer removed I am able to connect to the Linux desktop.

So the new Linux VDI protocol is essentially VNC going over websockets?  As that would explain why the load balancer is of any relevance since I have it configured to proxy websockets traffic.

With the connection issue now "resolved" (as I would like to have the web load balancer and proxy in place), I now see a Linux desktop but it has maximum resolution of 1280x768.  Is there a full-screen option where I can get a larger resolution?  If I launch a vncserver session I can adjust the resolution to something that is greater than what is being offered in my VDI desktop session.

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admin
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Hi Seth9,

web browser access is not officially supported so doesn't surprise it has issues. Tera 2 zero client is not supported. for Windows client, can you please update to the latest Windows client 3.4 and try again? client version below 3.4 is not supported.

William

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Seth9
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William,

Tried to connect with View Client 3.4 and got the message "The connection to the remote computer ended" immediately as I tried to launch the VM.  I can still get to the VM using the web browser.  I have also stood up a Windows linked clone pool as a comparison and I'm able to access it without any issue.

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admin
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it looks like a configuration issue. could you please collect the logs and send to us?

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Seth9
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The log bundle that got generated has many files that I will need to review before release.  To speed up the process, is there a particular set of log files that you are interested in?

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zhiminli
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Please send below files at first:

1) Files under /tmp/vmware-root or the latest vmware-mks-xxxxx.log

2) Files under /var/log/vmware

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Seth9
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Please see attachments.

From looking at the logs, it looks to me like the View Agent is creating a VNC listening socket.  So am I correct to assume that the View Client is connecting to the agent using VNC?

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Seth9
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Debug file attached this time.

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admin
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Thanks, Seth9. Linux VDI is not using VNC protocol although it listens on VNC socket.

We'll have our engineers to take a look at the logs. will update you once we have any findings.

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zhiminli
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In file "vmware-mks-2372.log", I didn't see any traces related to build up the session between view client and Linux agent.  So I don't think the path between view client and Linux agent is correctly configured.

Althrough ping can work between view client and Linux agent, you need also need to make sure TCP port 5443 is also enabled along the path from view client and Linux agent.

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Seth9
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I can see port 5443 listening on the Linux host.

To verify connectivity between the View Client to the Linux host, I conducted a simple test using Netcat running on the Linux host and Telnet running on my windows machine hosting the View Client.

On Linux host:

> nc  -l  5443

On Windows host:

> telnet  <linux host IP>  5443

With the test, I'm able to send traffic between the two machines.  The network configuration is flat with the client, view broker, and linux host on the same subnet.

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Seth9
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Found the issue.  My http load balancer was messing with the traffic between the client and Linux host.  With the load balancer removed I am able to connect to the Linux desktop.

So the new Linux VDI protocol is essentially VNC going over websockets?  As that would explain why the load balancer is of any relevance since I have it configured to proxy websockets traffic.

With the connection issue now "resolved" (as I would like to have the web load balancer and proxy in place), I now see a Linux desktop but it has maximum resolution of 1280x768.  Is there a full-screen option where I can get a larger resolution?  If I launch a vncserver session I can adjust the resolution to something that is greater than what is being offered in my VDI desktop session.

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admin
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Seth9,

Glad you figured out the issue. VMware VDI is not using VNC protocol. It is actually using a web-socket based protocol. The solution we supported is bigger than 1024 x 768. I'd like to wait for our engineer to chime in on the issue you are running into.

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zhiminli
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Hi, Seth9,

Please upload the new log files for investigation.

In addition to the files we requested before. It is better to include all files under "/var/log".

Thanks,

Zhimin

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Seth9
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Hi Zhimin,

Attached are the logs.  The only log file that I saw that can be of any relevance for troubleshooting (aside from the VMware logs) is the Xorg log file under /var/log.

Thanks,

Seth

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songkai
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Hi Seth9

     Could you attach the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file in your linux agent machine? Thank you very much!

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songkai
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Hi Seth9mem.png

    Could you check the memory of Video card in vsphere client. If you want to use the large sreen, PLZ set the Video card memory to large than 64M.

Seth9
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Finally got the issue resolved.  I increased the Video memory as suggested but that didn't seem to do the trick. I installed the xorg x11 driver for VMware (xorg-x11-drv-vmware) on the VM and relaunched the desktop with full screen and dynamic desktop resizing available.

I guess it was using the generic xorg vesa driver which doesn't work with the view agent? I'm curious of why the driver didn't get installed when I installed VMware Tool.

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admin
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Seth,

Thanks for your feedback and I am glad to see your issue has been resolved. We will double check you mentioned xorg driver issue.

Yanzhao/

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