Running the VMware Horizon View Client 3.2 in Ubuntu (and Ubuntu derivatives)

Have you ever felt like a Linux user in a Windows VDI world? You're not alone!

Any Linux fans that are familiar with the world of VDI know that the VMware View Client for Linux has appeared stuck at version 2.2 for what seems like forever. Then in December of 2014, we were given a lovely gift: the Horizon Client for Linux version 3.2.

In your excitement you download the client, open up your terminal, run the installer and launch the new release only to find your system has missing requirements. In the Users Guide for the 3.2 client, you'll find a laundry list of system requirements and pre-requisites. The trickiest of all being the OpenSSL requirements (not to mention 64-bit systems aren't supported).

This post will walk you through getting past the system requirements and getting the 3.2 Client up and running on your Ubuntu (or similar) system.

In this article, I will be installing the client on Linux Mint 17.1 x64, but please be aware that VMware will not support the Horizon View Client outside of the system requirements outlined in the Users Guide.

1. Download the .bundle from VMware here


2. Run the installer by typing  sudo sh ./file_name
   
   


3. This should launch the GUI installer. Accept the EULA
   
   


4. Configure your desired settings and verify the installation was successful
   
   

Hooray! You should be done right? Well most likely you may run into issues once you click that Scan button. You'll find that you pretty much bombed your mid-term:



Not to worry though, this is very simple to fix!

Now for my purposes, the only lib files I care about are libcrypto.so and libssl.so. I won't be using USB redirection or RTAV. What we need to do is create symbolic links between the 1.0.0 versions that I have installed, with the 1.0.1 naming that the Horizon Client wants to use. Let's start by finding where our current files live

1. Use the find command to locate your libcrypto and libssl files
   
   sudo find / -iname libssl*
   


2. Once you have the full paths of the files, create your symbolic links using
   
   sudo ln -s source_file destination_file
   
   


3. Now re-run your Scan test - you should find the appropriate files are now back on track to walk at graduation!
   
   

And congratulations are in order! You should now have a functioning 3.2 Horizon Client. You may see a dialog that reads:

VMware Horizon Client requires openssl-1.0.1i or above. But 1.0.1f seems to be installed on your system. This discrepancy could result in unexpected problems or even security leaks. Contact your administrator for more information.

Since you're using your system's openssl lib files, any system updates that affect these files shouldn't break compatibility - however if openssl gets updated later on, you'll likely need to update your symlinks to reflect the updated lib versions.

Now go get some work done!

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How to clear a user's "Auto connect to this desktop" setting as an admin

When using the Horizon View Client, users are able to select Options > Auto connect to this desktop. This will allow them to enter their credentials upon launching the client, then immediately get passed through to their desktop. The user will no longer be prompted to enter the View Server address.

This is easy enough to disable as the user. Simply login and UNcheck the option that was previously enabled. Alternateively, you can disable the option to Auto connect to the Connection server per VMware KB article 1013849

But how can this be achieved as the administrator? Perhaps a user mistakenly selected this option and it would just be easier for you to take care of it (yes this has happened).

I'll leave this up to you to decide if it's more trouble than it's worth.. but here's how to accomplish this =)

This setting is stored in the ADAM database on the Connection server for the user. As you can see from the screenshot below, a GUID will be generated for the user's session and there will be a value in the pae-NameValuePair attribute named alwaysConnect=true.

It's likely you will have plenty of GUID entries here so you'll want to perform a query on the database to find the entries that contain this value.

1. Right-click the database connection (shown as "View [localhost:389]) in this example, and click New > Query.


2. Under Root of Search, click Browse and select the Properties organizational unit.


3. Click OK.


4. In the Query String, paste this search string:

          (pae-NameValuePair=*alwaysConnect=true*)

 

 

This will show you users with always connect set to true. To disable the option for the user, simply change the value to false.

Pro Tip: If you set the attributes box to * to return everything then you can use the user SID in member to look up the user name. SID lookup is under Utilities > SID Lookup which will return you the username of that SID.

And there you go!

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