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madsuse
Contributor
Contributor

vSphere 5.5 Web Client on Linux not opening console


I am testing the vShpere Web Client on Linux ( OpenSuse 12.3 and Ubuntu 13) and when I try to open a console to a guest I get the following.

A new window opens with

Directory: /console/

WEB-INF/ 0bytes October 3, 2013 2:42:19 PM

It is the same on both Linux versions and I am using Chrome with the included 11.6 java.

If I try it with Firefox I get a message that I need at least Flash 12.5 (meant 11.5) and the latest available for download from Adobe is 12.2 (meant 11.2).

Any ideas?

29 Replies
abhilashhb
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

When you open Firefox it would say you need flash player 11.5 and above not 12.5.

This is one thing VMware forgot while releasing Web client 5.5.

Adobe flash player for linux was stopped at 11.2 and there are no newer versions. Maybe on the next release they will use HTML5 instead of flash( the whole reason why adobe stopped flash for linux).

you will be able to use it on a windows machine for now. Not sure when this sissue will be fixed by VMware.

Abhilash B
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhilashhb/

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mikespaceg
Contributor
Contributor

We are an all-Linux shop and this is a big broke for us as well.   Planning to roll vCenter server back to 5.1 until VMware fixes this.

freaky2000
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

yes vmware screwed us again. They did so with 4.0 removing the linux client, tons of complaints back then, they promised a new version - it never came and now there's the webclient, which, well, should be cross-platform (and admittedly, on 5.0 and 5.1 it worked fine under firefox for me).

Unfortunately Adobe stopped with flash, they do release security updates for linux' 11.2 version but no more new versions. Which means your only option is google chrome on linux as that comes with flash (PEPPER API so not usable in firefox etc.).

However - I haven't seen the webclient running properly under linux/chrome since 5.0 (never thus). So I wouldn't get my hopes up. They just screwed us (linux users) again. In many chrome versions it errors out right after loading. In versions in which it doesn't do that it has never been possible to edit VM's. Right after opening it'll say things like incorrect memory configuration, invalid disk configuration, stuff like that.

Really brilliant. Why they wrote it in flash and not HTML5 or even java (yes - it's a security hazard - but flash' track record really isn't that much better) is beyond most of us.

As a non-developer my guess would be it has to do with chrome's sandboxing of flash, but it's just a wild guess.

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kwhelan
Contributor
Contributor

There is an HTML5 version of it.   I have been trying to get it to work properly in a mac on Safari/Chrome.   It works mostly,  a little doggy but we are also getting frequent disconnects.   May be different on linux/chrome. 

Anyways when looking up the error message,  I came across this article that explains how to get the URL for it.  Claims to even work on iPad.

virtuallyGhetto: How to generate a pre-authenticated HTML5 VM console link in vSphere 5.5 that works...

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DanielOprea
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Hello,

Please, look to this KB:

VMware KB: HTML5 virtual machine console fails to open after restarting vCenter Server Appliance 5.5

The path in windows is: C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphereWebClient\server\bin\service\conf\wrapper.conf

Regards,

Daniel

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Garagegoblin
Contributor
Contributor

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jgruenke
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I believe Linux is no longer a supported OS for the web client as of version 5.5.  Only Windows and Mac are supported OS's.

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mikespaceg
Contributor
Contributor

jgruenke Have a source to back that up?

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jgruenke
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Please reference this KB article.  Mac OS is now supported as of 5.5, but Linux has been dropped.

VMware KB: Minimum requirements for installing the vSphere and vSphere Web 5.x Client

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jeremypage
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

This is really disappointing. Kind of defeats the point of a Web interface, no? We're a modest size shop (~80 vSphere Enterprise Plus & an early adopter for vCloud), makes VMware substantially less attractive to me as an administrator.

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jgruenke
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I don't believe that this is really a 'VMware' issue.  As mentioned further up in the thread, this is more of an issue of Linux no longer supporting Adobe Flash Player.  I believe if flash support was still there on Linux, the vSphere Web Client would still be an option on Linux distributions. 

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mikespaceg
Contributor
Contributor

It is most certainly a VMware problem.  The tools they chose to use are no longer supported on platforms their customers use.

steveb05
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I somewhat agree, but its one of those things. Could they have used HTML5? Yes, but that would leave some people out (my last company would not have been able to use the web client due to some circumstances). Every choice they have would leave someone out. The best option for them is to target the most likely solution to be inclusive of the biggest audience. Even though you are a Linux shop, its not hard/expensive to add a Windows 7/8 workstation or tablet somewhere in the admin toolbox. You could even use KVM to run a Windows VM on your workstation. Its a fact that Windows is the most prolific OS in business Operating system market share (by a BIG margin).

- Steve Please consider marking this answer "correct" or "helpful" if you found it useful. Steve Brill Virtualization Junkie VMware, SAN/NAS, Networking and Server Infrastructure Engineer
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Linuxerianer
Contributor
Contributor

I use Google Chrome on Linux and vSphere Web Client works like a charm.

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BrianKWhite
Contributor
Contributor

Doesn't work any more.

Chrome and Chromuim both dropped the entire netscape plugin api and no netscape-style plugins work any more. So we have:

Chromium: No built in flash and no plugins, so no flash, so no vsphere web client or console at all. Supposedly you can manually extract the new pepper flash from Chrome and get Chromium to use it. But you have to actually install Chrome to do it, so, what's the point?

Chrome: Built in pepper flash, vsphere web client works but NOT the console plugin. The link above about the html5 vm console includes a link to a perl script that no longer exists.

Nightly (aka firefox-trunk): Blank page that says install flash 11.5 or higher, which doesn't exist. 11.2 flash is installed and works for other stuff, and used to work on esx/vsphere 5.1 a few months ago.

Firefox: same as Nightly

So I sit here on a laptop that has nowhere near the cpu power or hd space to run windows in a vm, nor a copy of windows with serial numbers in my pocket... And no way to get to the damned consoles of my vms...

There are various ways around this of course but NONE of the ways to get a working console are convenient or fast. Before we got vmware all I needed to get at any console of any sever, hardware server, or vm, or vm host, was telnet or ssh, or vnc in a very few odd cases. The hardware nodes all had serial consoles and the vms were not vmware. Oh well that's what we paid so much for I guess!

I would complain about vmware relying on proprietary crap like flash for no reason, but really I never wanted my company to rely on proprietary crap like _vmware_ in the first place. Stupidly depending on Flash  or a particular browser feature is hardly much of a crime after stupidly depending on vmware itself.

This is pretty much exactly the kind of &^$& I knew would always be a problem, and it has been since day one of getting our shiny esx/vsphere cluster. Even when there was a way to make it all work for a few months there, it was still a crap solution requiring just the right browser and huge plugin downloads and just the right distro/version of just the right os, just to get a console. Every month or so it breaks again for one reason or another.

I used to have access to serial consoles that didn't need anything but ssh or telnet and in the rarest of rare cases maybe I'd need vnc for a graphical vm (not vmware) console. I had ssh and telnet and vnc clients on palmos phones, let alone any actual os. Those requirements are so low that it's essentially IMPOSSIBLE for me to be unable to get at those consoles no matter where I am what I'm doing. I was NEVER unpleasantly surprised. If I have my phone and one bar of service, or even a dialup phone and any kind of pc running *any* version of *any* os, I have full access to both the hosting platform and console access to both hardware and vm servers. No big downloads, no proprietary binaries or plugins, no compatibility issues at all, no breaking just because 3 months went by, no breaking ever period. And I don't just mean todays powerful phones with popular os's. I had telnet, ssh and vnc clients on my sph-i300 palmos phone from 2001. I just looked up a palm vnc client... It's 57k bytes. 57k bytes!!! and old as the hills and equivalent software available for free for any os that even has such a thing as tcp. Why the @#$%^ don't they understand that not requiring special software is an important thing? Even though I do have a windows laptop, it's not surgically grafted to my arm. Maybe using an e-ink book reader (for example) is a poor choice to admin a server, but I used to be able to, and having the requirements be that low is extremely valuable. Further, not only would it be nice, but there is no excuse NOT to have that, since we already had that since 30 years ago.

As an admin, I can't stand this. It's a huge expensive _downgrade_.

Vmware reseller sales pitch impresses the boss is the only reason it exists.

[update]

The perl script to generate a url for an html5 console moved and is now available here:

https://github.com/lamw/vghetto-scripts/blob/master/perl/generateHTML5VMConsole.pl

Not that I think I can even make use of it any time soon. The comments on that article are not inspiring. Not enough is explained about where & how and in what context that script is supposed to be run either.

[/update]

MKguy
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I completely agree with your rant that requiring klutzy flash and huge plugins for a web interface in this day and age is a huge PITA when we have HTML5.

[update]

The perl script to generate a url for an html5 console moved and is now available here:

https://github.com/lamw/vghetto-scripts/blob/master/perl/generateHTML5VMConsole.pl

Not that I think I can even make use of it any time soon. The comments on that article are not inspiring. Not enough is explained about where & how and in what context that script is supposed to be run either.

[/update]

As for the script you mentioned, you need to run that on a system with the viperltoolkit, for example with the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) virtual appliance:

https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/viperltoolkit/

https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vima/

./generateHTML5VMConsole.pl --vm MyVM --server MyvCenter --username user@domain

This will output the HTML5 console link.

-- http://alpacapowered.wordpress.com
BrianKWhite
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks very much. I will try to make use of those pointers.

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JustinMercier
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Using Chrome is not an option for us as we are a 90% Linux shop using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which Google Chrome no longer supports.

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Prividen
Contributor
Contributor

Hello.

I was able to connect to VM consoles from Linux with this conditions:
- Google Chrome;

- Allowed open new windows for VCenter site URL;

- installed VMware-ClientIntegrationPlugin (I downloaded it from VCenter appliance via SSH).

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