Bug#764295: open-vm-tools-desktop: service is not enabled by default and desktop integration has serious issues

[Norbert Lange]

Package: open-vm-tools-desktop
Version: 2:9.4.6-1770165-5
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

The issues below where observed with a fresh installation of Jessie and VMWare Player 6.0.3 build-1895310 (Windows 7 x64)

The steps for installing the open-vm-tools where the following:
*) Create a new VM
*) Install Jessie (Beta 2 x86), use gnome desktop
*) git the open-vm package
*) dpkg-buildpackage -b
*) dpkg -i the tools, desktop and dkms package

Rather than listing every bug issue separate, I chose to list them together since
I dont know enough to address the right package (resizing issue) and seperating the rest is hard
as the issues are likely related.

1) Overview of adverse effects:
-Resizing is rather dodgy, snaps back to a really small window when its resized to a somewhat bigger size ( like >= 400 pixels). But runnig fullscren does work fine.
Such a failed resize seems to create a real mess (own topic)

-The system daemon doesnt run, the user daemon seems to run, but without filedescriptor (means it cant access /tmp/VMWareDND)
ps output:
1235 ? S 0:00 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd -n vmusr

What it should be (From a wheezy installation):
2466 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
3561 ? S 0:00 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd -n vmusr --blockFd 3

-Drag and drop is not working
Is doesnt matter whether the service is enabled or not.
Drag and drop should basically work without a running vmblock, but often truncate files

2) Additional adverse effects after a failed resize:
-Clipboard is not shared between guest/host (seems like the xserver is somehow restarted on those tools and plugins loose track)

-System hangs on shutdown. Im quite sure this happens only if you had one or more failed resizings.

3) As far as I can tell (systemd is pretty alien to me):
* Sevice open-vm-tools is not "enabled" to run on startup
* Starting or enabling it doesnt makes any difference to drag&drap feature
* the run-vmblock-fuse scripts never get executed

4) Not sure if bugs:
the /etc/init.d script is still installed ?

-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
APT prefers testing-updates
APT policy: (500, 'testing-updates'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.16-2-686-pae (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages open-vm-tools-desktop depends on:
ii libatk1.0-0 2.12.0-1
ii libatkmm-1.6-1 2.22.7-2.1
ii libc6 2.19-11
ii libcairo2 1.12.16-5
ii libcairomm-1.0-1 1.10.0-1.1
ii libfontconfig1 2.11.0-6.1
ii libfreetype6 2.5.2-2
ii libgcc1 1:4.9.1-16
ii libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 2.30.8-1+b1
ii libglib2.0-0 2.42.0-1
ii libglibmm-2.4-1c2a 2.42.0-1
ii libgtk2.0-0 2.24.24-1
ii libgtkmm-2.4-1c2a 1:2.24.4-1.1
ii libice6 2:1.0.9-1
ii libpango-1.0-0 1.36.7-1
ii libpangocairo-1.0-0 1.36.7-1
ii libpangoft2-1.0-0 1.36.7-1
ii libpangomm-1.4-1 2.34.0-1.1
ii libsigc++-2.0-0c2a 2.2.11-4
ii libsm6 2:1.2.2-1
ii libstdc++6 4.9.1-16
ii libx11-6 2:1.6.2-3
ii libxext6 2:1.3.2-1
ii libxi6 2:1.7.4-1
ii libxinerama1 2:1.1.3-1
ii libxrandr2 2:1.4.2-1
ii libxrender1 1:0.9.8-1
ii libxtst6 2:1.2.2-1
ii open-vm-tools 2:9.4.6-1770165-5

Versions of packages open-vm-tools-desktop recommends:
ii fuse 2.9.3-15
ii open-vm-tools-dkms 2:9.4.6-1770165-5
ii xauth 1:1.0.9-1
ii xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse 1:13.0.0-1+b3
ii xserver-xorg-video-vmware 1:13.0.2-3+b1

Versions of packages open-vm-tools-desktop suggests:
ii xdg-utils 1.1.0~rc1+git20111210-7.1

-- no debconf information


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[Bernd Zeimetz]

Hi Norbert,

thanks a lot for your report!

> The issues below where observed with a fresh installation of Jessie
> and VMWare Player 6.0.3 build-1895310 (Windows 7 x64)
>
> The steps for installing the open-vm-tools where the following:
> *) Create a new VM
> *) Install Jessie (Beta 2 x86), use gnome desktop
> *) git the open-vm package
> *) dpkg-buildpackage -b
> *) dpkg -i the tools, desktop and dkms package

please pull again from git and build & install the packages.
I hope I've catched all bugs - and I found another one in
the systemd tools to install services :(

Also I figured out that automounting the /run/vmblock-fuse directory
doesn't work as the stupid vmware code tries to read trough
/etc/mtab or something like that.


Please check if the services start as expected and the
directory is mounted.

Thanks,

Bernd


--
Bernd Zeimetz Debian GNU/Linux Developer
http://bzed.de http://www.debian.org
GPG Fingerprint: ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485 DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F

[Norbert Lange]

Hello Bernd,

*)Services do indeed start and now show up nicely.

*)Blocking transfers DO work when copy on host, paste on client via
right-click menu

But...

*)Drag and drag still doesnt work, but I dont know how to triage the
issue. What happens is that the operation is not registered as DnD, or
atleast that the folder appears to not allow DnD (work from within the VM)
Possibly some GTK3 changes?

*) Resizing the window (to a somewhat bigger size, no clear threshold
there) will result in a small black window, seems like some X11 crash?
Resizing the window to a small one restores the content. I am not 100%
certain abaout it but the system seems to be somewhat unstable after such
an event.
Again not sure where to look, could be either the resizing plugin
(setting a big windowsize through display settings works) or the vmware
video driver

*) System hangs on reset/poweroff (Both through UI and shutdown -r now). I
suspect a failed resize causes or affects this. Might be related to
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=731892
-- I am attaching a log from this event

It would possibly help if I test this with XFCE too.
Cant you install VMWare player yourself for testing? Private use is free.

Regards, Norbert

[Norbert Lange]

I tried XFCE and this fixes the drag and drop issue.

The window resize and shutdown issue persist. The only further thing I
could do is using a XFCE-only installation (currently i just added XFCE to
the existing VM) and trying the official vmware tools

We are getting close to fixing up this messy package =)

Regards Norbert

[Norbert Lange]

Hi,

I found some other problem, if you ty to remove the open-vm-tools-desktop
package, the removal will fail
Its actually not possible to remove it after starting the desktop UI,
might be a problem for upgrading aswell?

---apt-get remove open-vm-tools-desktop:
Removing open-vm-tools-desktop (2:9.4.6-1770165-5) ...
Job for run-vmblock\x2dfuse.mount failed. See 'systemctl status
run-vmblock\x2dfuse.mount' and 'journalctl -xn' for details.
dpkg: error processing package open-vm-tools-desktop (--remove):
subprocess installed pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
open-vm-tools-desktop
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

---systemctl status run-vmblock\x2dfuse.mount:
● run-vmblockx2dfuse.mount
Loaded: not-found (Reason: No such file or directory)
Active: inactive (dead)

---journald:
Oct 08 23:46:22 debian-replace umount[1645]: umount: /run/vmblock-fuse:
device is busy.
Oct 08 23:46:22 debian-replace umount[1645]: (In some cases useful info
about processes that use
Oct 08 23:46:22 debian-replace umount[1645]: the device is found by
lsof(8) or fuser(1))
Oct 08 23:46:22 debian-replace systemd[1]: run-vmblock\x2dfuse.mount mount
process exited, code=exited status=1
Oct 08 23:46:22 debian-replace systemd[1]: Failed unmounting VMware
vmblock fuse mount.



If you have a look at the init script, the relevant part is the
unblock_vmblock_clients function:
https://github.com/nolange/pkg-open-vm-tools/blob/master/debian/open-vm-tools.init

After calling it the filesystem should be easily unmounted

(Anyway, is it a good idea to cancel the removal/upgrade of the package -
maybe this should be forced even if in use?)

[Bernd Zeimetz]

Hi Norbert,

different from the proprietary vmware guest stuff, the open-vm-tools
source does not ship any graphics drivers or other this which are
related to resizing and similar issues.

So I've cloned to bug and reassigned #765490 to the
xserver-xorg-video-vmware package.

> *)Drag and drag still doesnt work, but I dont know how to triage the
> issue. What happens is that the operation is not registered as DnD, or
> atleast that the folder appears to not allow DnD (work from within
> the VM)
> Possibly some GTK3 changes?

I don't think the DnD problem is actually an issue in
xserver-xorg-video-vmware, so it might make sense to clone the bug
again to reassign this point to gtk/gnome/whatever.

But this is clearly a graphipcs driver issue:

> *) Resizing the window (to a somewhat bigger size, no clear threshold
> there) will result in a small black window, seems like some X11 crash?
> Resizing the window to a small one restores the content. I am not
> 100% certain abaout it but the system seems to be somewhat unstable
> after such an event.
> Again not sure where to look, could be either the resizing plugin
> (setting a big windowsize through display settings works) or the
> vmware video driver

Please discuss the X11 related issues in #765490 and I'll handle the
vmtoolsd issues in #764295

[Bernd Zeimetz]

Hi,

> *) System hangs on reset/poweroff (Both through UI and shutdown -r now). I
> suspect a failed resize causes or affects this. Might be related to
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=731892

I'm moving this discussion to the mentioned bug as U think its the same issue.
Various reports on other distributions' bugtrackers show, that the vmtoolsd
instance which is started during login of the user is the troublemaker as it
doesn't react on SIGTERM signals.

Unfortunately I failed to reproduce it here, here it just quits perfectly fine.
It might have been an issue from libglib, which was fixed in the meantime...


If you can still reproduce it with an updated system form unstable, please do
the following:

- install ltrace
- find the pid fo the vmtoolsd user process, something like
ps -Af | grep vmtoolsd
should help.
- on a console login as root and run
ltrace -p $PID > /tmp/vmtoolsd_ltrace.txt
with $PID being replaced by the PID you figured out first.
- switch back into X and logout. wait for it, don't kill stuff or so please.
- mail /tmp/vmtoolsd_ltrace.txt to this bug or (especially if you think there a
private informations in the file, which I doubt but you might want to check it)
just mail it to me directly.

[Norbert Lange]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 17:11:10 +0200 Bernd Zeimetz <be...@bzed.de> wrote:
> Hi Norbert,
>different from the proprietary vmware guest stuff, the open-vm-tools
> source does not ship any graphics drivers or other this which are
> related to resizing and similar issues.
>So I've cloned to bug and reassigned #765490 to the
> xserver-xorg-video-vmware package.

This package provides the resizing plugin. I cant say what is responsible
but since the
video driver works without issues at any resolution I would suspect it has
to be related to the plugin.
(Besides it seems not to depend on the size, but rather how soon you
release the button after moving the mouse)

>> *)Drag and drag still doesnt work, but I dont know how to triage the
> > issue. What happens is that the operation is not registered as DnD, or
> > atleast that the folder appears to not allow DnD (work from within
> > the VM)
> > Possibly some GTK3 changes?
>I don't think the DnD problem is actually an issue in
> xserver-xorg-video-vmware, so it might make sense to clone the bug
> again to reassign this point to gtk/gnome/whatever.

Yeah, sure. Need to figure out the where-/whatever though

> But this is clearly a graphipcs driver issue:
>> *) Resizing the window (to a somewhat bigger size, no clear threshold
> > there) will result in a small black window, seems like some X11 crash?
> > Resizing the window to a small one restores the content. I am not
> > 100% certain abaout it but the system seems to be somewhat unstable
> > after such an event.
> > Again not sure where to look, could be either the resizing plugin
> > (setting a big windowsize through display settings works) or the
> > vmware video driver
>Please discuss the X11 related issues in #765490 and I'll handle the
> vmtoolsd issues in #764295

I will, just trying to wrap some common stuff up:

I tried using the vmware tools, and the same issues (resizing, shutdown +
DnD) persist. Might be possible that we have to
wait till its fixed in the official driver and trickled down to the
open-vm-tools.
Wouldve liked a painless out-of-box experience with jessie, but on the
upside this means that the debian package is pretty much
on par with the official stuff.