Tag Archives: VMWare

CLI, OS

Fix vmware-view RDP issues in Linux

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I’ve been using vmware view as a means to remote into my computers at work for some time now. An update to the linux client appears to have broken my ability to remote into work machines over the RDP protocol. This issue affects multiple distros.

The symptom is the fact that after you log into vmware-view and double click on a computer you wish to connect to over the RDP protocol, the screen flashes for a second and then takes you right back to where you started – no error message. Frustrating.

If you launch vmware-view in a console you get a little more insight into what’s going on:

RDP Client(10222): WARNING: Unknown -r argument
2017-02-26 14:06:53.817-07:00: vmware-view 7858| RDP Client(10222): 
2017-02-26 14:06:53.817-07:00: vmware-view 7858| RDP Client(10222): Possible arguments are: comport, disk, lptport, printer, sound, clipboard, scard

After much frustration I was able to combine documentation from vmware and freerdp in order to finally get the right combination of arguments to get things working again. I read that freerdp works better than rdesktop with this version, so I tried launching vmware-view with this option:

vmware-view --rdpclient="xfreerdp"

Progress – at least now the error message was different.

RDP Client(20799): [14:04:04:097] [20799:20803] [ERROR][com.freerdp.crypto] - certificate not trusted, aborting.

After more investigation the culprit turned out to be crypto negotiation. Since I’m already connected to the truste work VMware server, I don’t really care about certificate validation. This is what finally got me up and running. The key components are the rdpclient and the /cert-ignore options.

vmware-view --rdpclient="xfreerdp" --xfreerdpOptions="-wallpaper /sound:sys:alsa /cert-ignore"

You can include these options in your ~/.vmware/view-preferences config file so you don’t have to manually add all those switches:

echo 'view.rdpClient = "xfreerdp"
view.xfreerdpOptions = "-wallpaper /sound:sys:alsa /cert-ignore"' >> ~/.vmware/view-preferences

Finally RDP via vmware-view is working in Linux again.

Update 11/18/2018: I was having a very annoying issue with sound on my Debian Jessie box. If the system I was remoted into made any sound, it would corrupt the sound on my machine. It would make every sound sound tinny and fuzzy. I would have to run pulseaudio -k to fix it.

It turns out this was caused by /sound:sys:alsa above. I changed that to be /sound:sys:pulse and all was well.

CLI, OS

Configure VMWare View Smartcard in Ubuntu

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Recently I’ve been required to use a smart card to log into some servers I manage. Configuring my Linux Mint 17.2 machine to pass my smartcard through to those machines via VMWare View has not been straightforward. This guide will walk you through how to get Smartcard redirection to work with VMWare View in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, which Linux Mint 17.2 is based off of. Enjoy.

Procedure

  1. Install the latest version of the VMWare View client (distro versions are often quite out of date) from here 
    chmod +x VMware-Horizon-Client-3.5.0-2999900.x64.bundle 
sudo ./VMware-Horizon-Client-3.5.0-2999900.x64.bundle
  2. Install necessary packages for CommonAccessCard (thanks to this helpful ubuntu writeup) 
    sudo apt-get install libpcsclite1 pcscd pcsc-tools
  3. (re)Start the pcscd daemon 
    sudo /etc/init.d/pcscd restart
  4. Ensure your smartcard reader is properly identified by running this command: 
    pcsc_scan

    If that command is stuck on “Waiting for the first reader…” then you need to install your smartcard drivers. If it sees your smartcard, skip this next step and proceed to step 6.

  5. Install your smartcard driver. This process is different for each card. For the card reader I have (the Identive SCR3500 A Contact Reader), I was able to obtain the drivers after much difficulty from here. The link to the drivers itself are here (alternate link). In my case I was able to untar and run the install script, which worked beautifully.
  6. Install 32 bit compatibility libraries (only applicable for 64 bit installations) thanks to this site for the answer and this one for clarification 
    sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y libxml2:i386 libssl1.0.0:i386 libXtst6:i386 libudev1:i386 libpcsclite1:i386 libtheora0:i386 libv4l-0:i386 libpulse0:i386
sudo ln -sf /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libudev.so.0
sudo ln -sf /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libssl.so.1.0.0 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libssl.so.1.0.1
sudo ln -sf /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libcrypto.so.1.0.0 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libcrypto.so.1 
sudo ln -sf /lib/$(arch)-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1 /lib/$(arch)-linux-gnu/libudev.so.0
  7. (re)Start the vmware-USBArbitrator and vmware-view-USBD services 
    sudo /etc/init.d/vmware-USBArbitrator start
sudo /etc/init.d/vmware-view-USBD start

    For some reason after I did all of this the vmware-view binary was nowhere to be found. It was quite strange. I fixed this issue by removing and re-installing the view client:

    sudo ./VMware-Horizon-Client-3.5.0-2999900.x64.bundle -u vmware-horizon-client
sudo ./VMware-Horizon-Client-3.5.0-2999900.x64.bundle

    After doing this the binary was there as expected.

  8. Create a config file to instruct the view client to redirect your smartcard reader. 
    echo 'viewusb.IncludeFamily = "smart-card"' >> /etc/vmware/config
echo 'viewusb.AllowSmartcard = "true"' >> /etc/vmware/config

    There is no graphical option to pass devices through like there is in the Windows client. I spent more time than I’d like to admit on this step. It turns out the name of the file is important – it has to simply be called “config.” Place this config file in ~/.vmware (it can also be placed in /etc/vmware/config and/or /usr/lib/vmware/config)

  9. Start vmware-view and enjoy your new smartcard capabilities 
    vmware-view

Troubleshooting

If it’s not working, make sure that these services are started

  • pcscd
  • vmware-USBArbitrator
  • vmware-view-USBD

One of these services have been known to crash if you attempt to connect while your smartcard is plugged in. The dance to get around this is to unplug your card reader, re-launch the above services, launch vmware-view, connect to your view server, and then only after you’ve logged in, plug in your card reader.

 

Update 2/25/2016: Here is the script I use to make my chromebook work beautifully for remoting into work:

sudo /etc/init.d/pcscd restart
sudo /etc/init.d/vmware-USBArbitrator restart
sudo /etc/init.d/vmware-view-USBD restart
setres 1600 1024
vmware-view
setres 2560 1700
OS, Virtualization

Slow Linux VM performance in VMware vSphere

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Recently I’ve been scratching my head over a particular performance issue with Linux VMs hosted on VMWare vSphere. Everything seemed to move at a glacial pace.

vmstat gave a few clues as to what was happening, although depending on what I read it still wasn’t clear:

vmstat

It became apparent that I was suffering from some kind of queuing problem. I wasn’t sure if it was CPU or disk related. I came across this post which has a lot of good performance tuning guides.This tip caught my eye:

 

7. Set your disk scheduling algorithm to ‘noop’

The Linux kernel has different ways to schedule disk I/O, using schedulers like deadline, cfq, and noop. The ‘noop’ — No Op — scheduler does nothing to optimize disk I/O. So why is this a good thing? Because ESX is also doing I/O optimization and queuing! It’s better for a guest OS to just hand over all the I/O requests to the hypervisor to sort out than to try optimizing them itself and potentially defeating the more global optimizations.

You can change the kernel’s disk scheduler at boot time by appending:

elevator=noop

to the kernel parameters in /etc/grub.conf.

Sure enough, I modified /boot/grub/grub.conf on my Centos 6 boxes and appended elevator=noop to the kernel line, then rebooted. It helped a lot! Performance no longer was pitiful. I’m not nearly as familiar with vmware as I am with Xenserver so this was a good hint.