[X2Go-Dev] Problem with X2Go and VMWare Tools

newsgroups.mail2 at stefanbaur.de newsgroups.mail2 at stefanbaur.de
Sat Feb 18 20:13:52 CET 2012


Am 18.02.2012 19:54, schrieb Daniel Lindgren:
> I've been troubleshooting a weird problem with X2Go for a while, when
> connecting to Gnome sessions in virtual machines the top and bottom
> panels are displayed but the desktop/background never shows up and the
> mouse pointer never stops spinning. It's like the Gnome session
> startup reaches 99% and then just waits forever for something.
>
> It turns out it's related to VMWare Tools. I use VMWare Hypervisor
> (ESXi) 5, I can't say if the problem started when I upgraded from ESXi
> 4 to 5, but it's fairly recent.
<snip>

> Starting a Gnome session locally on the virtual machine console
> successfully finishes. I've tried using xrdp instead of X2Go and had
> no problems starting sessions, both using X11rdp and X11vnc on the
> server side. There's only one vmtoolsd running unless it's a X2Go
> session.
>
> I've unsuccessfully tried to figure out what the root cause is. It
> seems related to X2Go login/startup, somehow vmtoolsd starts twice and
> there's a conflict blocking Gnome startup.
>
> I did however find a workaround; uninstall VMWare Tools and install
> the open-vm-tools package from the Debian repository (contrib has to
> be added). No problems with X2Go so far and VMWare seems happy with
> the open source tools (Shutdown/Restart Guest is available in vSphere
> Client).

Exactly which flavor of Linux are you running? Plain Debian, Ubuntu 
("bastardized" with an additional Debian repository for open-vm-tools), 
or something completely different? And which version?

I remember seeing some VMtools related issues in the release notes for 
VMware Workstation, so - have you checked ESXi's release notes?
Workstation release notes can be found here: 
https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/ws_pubs.html - I'd wager a guess 
that ESXi's release notes are available somewhere in the vicinity of 
that page.

<soapbox>
The hassle with having to install vmware tools in every guest to perform 
a soft power-off, and keeping the tools up-to-date and matching the 
currently installed kernel is one of the many reasons why I'm moving my 
customers away from VMware to KVM+libvirt.  Of course, they were using 
VMware Server, not ESXi, but honestly, my personal opinion after years 
of using VMware products in multiple scenarios is, if you aren't forced 
to use VMware (upper management decisions, already existing virtual 
infrastructure based on VMware components,...), don't.  Had KVM been 
available and in a usable state 6 years ago, I would never have touched 
VMware Server.  VMware Workstation is kind of neat for debugging/demoing 
stuff, though, I have to admit that.

Shutting down a guest in KVM/libvirt works by sending an ACPI 
"power-button pressed" event to the guest, no special drivers/modules 
required, just the stock ACPI support present in every modern operating 
system, be it Linux, *BSD or Windows.
</soapbox>
-Stefan



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