Friday, April 8

The Linux PCoIP client from HP

There was some hassle about VMware's support for View client on Linux.
The official way to access View from linux is using view open client from http://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/. Now, this client does NOT support PCoIP, which is a major drawback.
You can access View using PCoIP from your Windows, iPad, or Teradici based device (I prefer Samsung's NC series, but the Wyse P20, the Dell FX100 etc are all the same. A complete list of devices using Teradici's HW is available here).
Android or iOS on the phone are not supported (yet). There is the Wyse PocketCloud, which is a great thing, but for RDP only.
So HP developed it's own version of View client for Linux, the code is probably heavily based on the open client (it uses the same interface, same config files/options...).
This software is for HP's thin clients with a kind of debian based firmware, but luckily it is a simple i386 .deb package.
One can easily download it from HP's site, and use it for his own dark purposes, as stated in this forum thread.
Currently, there is a View 4.5 based client in it, which works as charm with 4.6.
To download the archive, go to HP t5545 Thin Client support (search for the device on HP.com, then choose support), and download the link HP ThinPro Add-On (VMware View Broker) / 4.5.0-293049-1 Rev. A - 12 nov. 2010 - 5.2 Megs. The file is called sp50874.exe. Okay, for lazy people, it is here :) ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp50501-51000/sp50874.exe. It will extract a few files to C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\HP ThinPro\3.2\Add-On\View45 by default. We will only need vmware-view-client_4.5.0-293049-1_i386.deb.
If you don't have dpkg (slackware ftw), then simply rename the .deb to whatever.ar, and ar x it. Then in the data.tar.gz you will find the required directory structure.
For 64biters: this will require 32 bit versions of libxml2.so.2 and libpixman-1.so.0, in /usr/lib.
To use USB redirection, there is postinst script in control.tar.gz, that will do the trick.

3 comments:

  1. Hi! couldn’t find the control.tar.gz from the 2 .deb packages…. anybody knows how to activate USB redirection?

    Thks a lot

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey John,
    thanks for the above.

    i have followed your steps using openSUSE 12.1 and all appears to be working great, excluding the USB passthrough.

    your comment, "To use USB redirection, there is postinst script in control.tar.gz, that will do the trick" i found a little vague though.

    was hoping you could ellaborate a little mor eon that point.
    i am unsure where to be looking for that control.tar.gz file and cannot find it anywhere.

    any info would be great.
    cheers, leon ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. execute the following line to make usb-redirection work:
    ln -s /usr/lib/vmware/vmware-view-usb /etc/vmware/usb.link

    greets, SiruS

    ReplyDelete