Problem with RealVNC 4.0 on Guests of VMWare ESX

[Corné Beerse]

salvatore.cagliari "at" pharma.novartis.com wrote:
> Dear all
> 
> I hope that there is a VNC Developer out there that can help us in solve 
> this problem:
> 
> We have a Linux Box with VMWare ESX 1.2.1 installed on it. On VMWare we 
> created three Windows 2000 Guests and installed RealVNC 4.0 on it.
> 
> Now comes the problem: After a while (a few hours), after I connected on 
> one of the VM's with the VNCViewer, the Ctrl-Alt-Del Windows is 
> disappeared! We are no more able to log in to this machine through VNC nor 
> through the VMWare Remote Console (They both connect to the same console). 
> The only way is to connect with RDP/Remote Console. But even through this, 
> or through a remote shutdown command, it was no more possible to cleanly 
> reboot the server. We have to power down the VM to restart it.
> 
> After communicating with VMWare about this problem we isolate RealVNC 4.0 
> as the cause of this problem. After installing TightVNC 1.2.9 or RealVNC 
> 3.3.3 the systems behaves normally and we are able to connect to the VM's 
> through VNCViewer (4.0) and VMWare Remote Console.
> 

I've also followed the other posts on this subject but I still reply to the 
origional since I have some ideas about this subject:

The problem machine is a VMWare guest, running M$Windows and VNC-server. At 
first sight I donnot see why VNC is used, since the VMWare console has more 
functionallity. Reasons to do use vnc in a vmware guest inculde security 
(vnc-viewers cannot access the powerbutton for example) and some network 
optimization.

VMWare provides its own display drivers to coop with the 
virtual-display-hardware. Since both the (virtual-) hardware and the drivers are 
  from the same resource, it might not conform to all standards or otherwise act 
as expected. Since VNC has some expectations to the system, it might not find 
these details. Kind of like the direct-access of some video-boards where VNC 
does not find anything to display.

With this in mind, I expect that the video-acceleration that can be set in the 
display-settings, can have some influence in the relation between vnc and 
vmware. Then, VMWare can emulate some (vga-type) hardware. Choosing that might 
also give a better vnc-performance (be it on a horrible display quality..)

In the end, the best solution can be some add-on to VMWare that provides the VNC 
protocol to the VMWare console. Kind of like the vnc.so-library that can hook 
into XFree86. Then, the console of the VMWare guest can be accessed with 
vnc-viewers and with the VMWare console.

Additional freatures of a vnc-server as module to the vmware-console include:
- os-indipendend vnc since it is handled by the virtual-hardware
- Also available to systems (vmware-guests) that do not have their own network 
access, using the hosts network access.
- From a VMWare point of view: a nice alternate to a view-only vmware-console.



CBee