Mouse movement in VMware vCloud Director is not tracked in console sessions

Products

• VMware Aria Suite
• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Console sessions to virtual machines from vCloud Director do not track mouse movement correctly.
• Mouse clicks may pass through correctly.
• Sessions from vCenter Server work normally.

Environment

VMware vRealize Automation 6.2.x

Cause

 

Console sessions are divided into two connection protocols: VMRC & WebMKS. Within the remote session, mouse movement is tracked through an Absolute or Relative position depending on the connection protocol used, and the configuration of the virtual machine.VMRC works with a Relative mouse position and WebMKS sessions require an Absolute mouse position to function properly.
 

Note: Currently, WebMKS does not support relative mouse positions.

Resolution

This is a known issue affecting VMware vCloud Director(vCD). Currently, there is no resolution for this.
 

To work around this issue, console sessions from vCD absolute mouse position must be passed.

 

To pass the console from vCD absolute mouse position, use one of these options:

• Install VMware Tools
• Install a USB Controller to the virtual machine
• Update vCloud Director database to use VMRC console instead of WebMKS using below steps:
  1. ​​Backup the vCloud Director database.
  2. Run these queries to insert new values in config table of vCloud Director database:

insert into config (cat, name, value) values ('vcloud', 'console.webmks.firefox.windows', 'false'); 
insert into config (cat, name, value) values ('vcloud', 'console.webmks.ie.windows', 'false');
insert into config (cat, name, value) values ('vcloud', 'console.webmks.chrome.windows', 'false');
insert into config (cat, name, value) values ('vcloud', 'console.webmks.firefox.linux', 'false');
insert into config (cat, name, value) values ('vcloud', 'console.webmks.chrome.linux', 'false');

Additional Information