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Nitzan_S
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Copy/paste to guest when using VNC

When using VNC to connect to a virtual machine via it's host ESXi I am unable to copy/paste text between my machine running the VNC client and the VM running on vmware.

However, it does work when using the console access from the vsphere client (isolation.tools.copy.disable

Any idea why? How do they make it work? what protocol is used to do the copy/pasting from the console?

Thanks.

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banackm
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

The copy/paste mechanism supported our VNC connections, and the one working through a VMRC console (which is what I'm assuming the vSphere client is using) should work the same way on the server side.

So they both need these config options in order to work:

isolation.tools.copy.disable = false

isolation.tools.paste.disable = false

If the VMRC console works, and with the same VM another VNC client doesn't work, my guess is that the VNC client has an issue, or doesn't support the standard RFB "CutText" messages properly?

(If you want technical details, we should be following RFC 6143: RFC 6143 - The Remote Framebuffer Protocol  where the relevant sections are "ClientCutText" and "ServerCutText". )

What VNC client software are you using, and what is the OS in your guest/host/client ?

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parmarr
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Documentation stating text copy paste won't work through VNC.

Use a VNC Client to Connect to a Virtual Machine

Some searching suggests that it may be possible through an alt setup with virt manager + spice combo.

Sincerely, Rahul Parmar VMware Support Moderator
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