Installing a Linux PCoIP View Client

Last week I was reading through a forum and found a link to an HP thin term package that was said to contain a PCoIP LINUX View Client, since VMware does not have a Linux client with PCoIP I decided I would take a look and try this out. Please note that this is in NO WAY supported by VMware or HP. Use this process at your own risk, I would not recommend this for a production environment since it is not supported.

The forum with the http://communities.vmware.com/message/1508142

The process is fairly straightforward…

  1. Install Debian 5.0 with the Desktop packages (default install is perfect)
  2. Download HP vmware brokerupdate package to your debian desktop
  3. Open command prompt and start aptitude
  4. Remove rdesktop package
  5. Close aptitude
  6. Extract brokerupdate zip file
  7. use dpkg to install the hp rdesktop file
  8. use dpkg to install the hp vmware-view-client
  9. Run vmware-view

First install Debian 5.0 as you normally would, and when it comes time to pick what “tasks” to install select “Desktop environment” and finish the installation. Once the machine is booted up and you are logged in open up a terminal windows and run to following command as root.

apt-get remove rdesktop tsclient

After this is completed you are ready to download and install the HP version of the VMWare View Client with PCoIP. This step will need to be done on a windows system. After the download is complete run the program and extract the files to a location on your pc, make a note of the location as we will need to access those files in the next step.

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp46001-46500/sp46024.exe

After the files are downloaded and extracted out use a utility like winscp, or ftp or samba to transfer the two files listed below to the home directory on the linux machine. The easiest way that I have found and the quickest is to install ssh on the linux machine and then connect to it via winscp and transfer the files that way. The package that will need to be installed for ssh/scp to work is openssh-server.

hptc-rdesktop_1.6.0-1.27_i386.deb

vmware-view-client_4.0.1-235010_i386.deb

After the files are located in your home directory we will use the dpkg utility to install them with the following two commands.

dpkg -i hptc-rdesktop_1.6.0-1.27_i386.deb

dpkg -i vmware-view-client_4.0.1-235010_i386.deb

After this step is complete you now have a Linux system with a PCoIP View client. However no shortcut is created, but you can launch this program from the command line by running:

vmware-view

You can create a desktop icon by simply right-clicking on the desktop and be creating a new launcher and putting in the appropriate details.

My next post on this subject will be on how to turn this workstation into a terminal that automatically boots right to the view client with no other logins needed which will make the normal user experience much simpler.

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17 Responses to "Installing a Linux PCoIP View Client"

  1. Unfortunately I have not had time to write it. I should be able to finish it up this week, and I will also write about how to upgrade the view client to the View 4.5 version. I don’t know if there are any big changes but PCoIP is supposed to be more optimized. If you have it working and just want to know how to do the auto login its pretty simple. Create a BASH script to call “startx /usr/bin/vmware-view” then on the next line have it call itself. This will make it recursive and the user can only break out by hitting CTRL-C at the right time. The final step is to tell linux to automatically log on a user with mgetty or something. I will finish up part 2 asap and explain all of that more in detail though.

  2. Hi Justin,

    Did you investigated something more about this?
    First of all, I wish to say thank you. This is a great technical note, and makes me see the light about PCoIP over Linux.
    So, I’ve been testing, and I cannot connect peripherals into the PCoIP machine. I mean, I got and USB pendrive connected into my Linux, but I cannot see him on PCoIP…
    Any suggestions?
    Thanks in advance,

    Jos

  3. The most likely reason is because the PCoIP USB manager isn’t installed. In the package that you downloaded there are other packages in there that have this manager, but I have not been able to get it to work properly. As for investigating this further … I haven’t had much time lately but it is on my to do list for a follow up post.

  4. Justin,
    This is a great article, thanks for publishing it. I was wondering if you ever got the followup finished
    on how to turn this workstation into a terminal that automatically boots right to the view client

  5. Hi,

    is there a version for amd64 linux systems or a way to install the 32bit version?

    cheers
    mathias

  6. because a terminal is so lightly used and really has no need for the extended memory support of a 64 bit system i would probably just use a 32 bit distro even if you have a 64 bit processor. You could install IA32 libs and other 32 bit dependencies, but it would just over complicate the solution for unfamiliar users.

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

    Thks a lot

  8. Hey just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The words in your post seem to be running off the screen in Ie. I’m not sure if this is a formatting issue or something to do with browser compatibility but I figured I’d post to let you know. The design and style look great though! Hope you get the issue resolved soon. Thanks

  9. Thank you very much!
    vmware-view-client_4.0.1-235010_i386.deb doesn’t work for me, but I installed vmware-view-client_2.2.0-0ubuntu0.12.04_i386.deb and it seems to be work fine.

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