1. Forum
  2. Usenet
  3. LINUX.DEBIAN.BUGS.DIST

  • Bug#1108643: Trixie Keyboard Shortcut Issues within VMWare

    From Simon McVittie@21:1/5 to David Kennedy on Tue Jul 15 21:10:01 2025
    XPost: linux.debian.devel

    On Tue, 15 Jul 2025 at 18:27:46 +0000, David Kennedy wrote:
    I am finding that it is consistently easy to crash [a VMWare VM] just
    doing Ctrl-C many time

    Does this VM have some sort of VMware "guest agent" installed, like a
    VMware equivalent of the functionality of qemu-guest-agent and virtualbox-guest-x11? Those components sometimes intercept copy/paste in
    order to synchronize the clipboard inside and outside the VM.

    If yes, then this sounds like a problem with that component: please
    report it to your VMware support contact, or whoever provided that
    component to you. It is possible that it is not compatible with some
    updated component found in trixie.

    VMware tools is installed also.

    I don't know exactly what this is, but it sounds like it might be the
    VMware equivalent of what I decribed. There doesn't seem to be a
    component of that name in Debian, so presumably you must have got it
    from somewhere else.

    Debian generally cannot provide support for third-party software.

    smcv

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Cyril Brulebois@21:1/5 to All on Wed Jul 16 07:30:01 2025
    XPost: linux.debian.devel

    Simon McVittie <[email protected]> (2025-07-15):
    On Tue, 15 Jul 2025 at 18:27:46 +0000, David Kennedy wrote:
    I am finding that it is consistently easy to crash [a VMWare VM] just
    doing Ctrl-C many time

    Does this VM have some sort of VMware "guest agent" installed, like a VMware equivalent of the functionality of qemu-guest-agent and
    virtualbox-guest-x11? Those components sometimes intercept copy/paste in order to synchronize the clipboard inside and outside the VM.

    If yes, then this sounds like a problem with that component: please report
    it to your VMware support contact, or whoever provided that component to
    you. It is possible that it is not compatible with some updated component found in trixie.

    VMware tools is installed also.

    I don't know exactly what this is, but it sounds like it might be the VMware equivalent of what I decribed. There doesn't seem to be a component of that name in Debian, so presumably you must have got it from somewhere else.

    Debian generally cannot provide support for third-party software.

    Seen in hw-detect's hw-detect.finish-install.d/08hw-detect:

    case "$(detect_virt)" in
    vmware)
    if detect_desktop; then
    apt-install --with-recommends open-vm-tools-desktop || true
    else
    apt-install --with-recommends open-vm-tools || true
    fi
    ;;

    The description seems to match what you had in mind (except for the name).


    Cheers,
    --
    Cyril Brulebois ([email protected]) <https://debamax.com/>
    D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant

    -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

    iQIzBAABCgAdFiEEtg6/KYRFPHDXTPR4/5FK8MKzVSAFAmh3NwcACgkQ/5FK8MKz VSBrgA//TQ4OjLwrwy9ziVVGSqTRSBpAzUhQkpSjdXXRhbWiqfxmty3Jv+3KjTnS nmQnzF8hr0/h7aLRQxKd6HFPdWoR9PxlkM8hkwB9d3Nm8ZAE7wuCa5oHTHflrGC5 XDkSl1os1iaooGzYefFSa/5mvv7bHJvMcYMK2VkZE//3Ttm2MjTaaDbKTmC8UTsB huKJ/EI92bjx+BEjKmCGfMFRDRMZs5iZKOZxcYdndKVxpEUHntLbL3VAgfg4LhdR M9xaEDaO27ylIkF4M3ZMEx8bXCRjyyf87x19h5lXikh9ipoqA2tsSLM0U2mKfpoE Ql1qxhueGLxAY2acQspm34Uu28R1OIZLR81k+Fh3CmEcVB3aGcc3bTt/9uypu/IY HKCebSWfEjREYqU6hsFnbhkEGvrffsqlaJhxAFqjJF1uOR2oYseh1qdG2ZLypOrU OU3BOHVfNARmh1T+y75dZNCWXfZwxdPlEHRI0qoTwolmm6dYV2LJvzd/ukmmsWHv nPI9XqaOaNiqGpNRZEDu8QgRdfa+R0Oa02gVXMK3k5be+TACE/W7GByG0FTYQltW G+TWl4ALOqzrt8sq2EzYM2FSNLhH4XeNfw2vJSTvy7fbF8pMs7Dyos0xNwjwuihc lenFzRGaRSd7D8I1zKnbicjRvKPTtqBSLG6xa7FH8a+cfiIJs9w=
    =zwZP
    -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    *
  • From Simon McVittie@21:1/5 to David Kennedy on Wed Jul 16 11:30:02 2025
    XPost: linux.debian.devel

    Control: retitle -1 in VMware with open-vm-tools-desktop, XFCE becomes unresponsive after repeated copy/paste

    On Wed, 16 Jul 2025 at 08:13:03 +0000, David Kennedy wrote:
    after a few Ctrl-C keystrokes it crashes something and I can't use my mouse or keyboard, and worth noting that these open-vm-tools below weren't installed manually by me

    Aha, open-vm-tools (or probably in your case open-vm-tools-desktop)
    sounds like exactly the sort of component I had in mind - I had expected
    it to have vmware in its name, but it does not.

    Please check the systemd Journal for information about what is crashing
    and in what way, by running journalctl as root (use sudo or su).
    Probably the easiest way is:

    - install the VM with a blank root password (this will add your non-root
    user to the sudo group, making it an administrator)
    - when asked what tasks to install, add your chosen desktop environment
    (XFCE?) and also the ssh server
    - log in to the VM via ssh as your non-root user using their password
    - in the ssh shell, run: sudo journalctl -f
    - in the GUI interface, copy/paste repeatedly to trigger the bug
    - everything that is written to the system log during that time will
    appear in the ssh shell and can be copied into a text file

    Your video seems to show the XFCE user interface becoming unresponsive,
    which is not exactly a "crash"; it's possible that this is caused by
    some component behind the scenes crashing, but it is not possible to
    confirm or deny this by just looking at what is shown on the VM's
    virtual monitor.

    Another useful debugging step would be to remove open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools-desktop from the VM:

    sudo apt purge open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop

    then reboot the VM and try to reproduce the bug. If you cannot, then
    that would be evidence of a problem with open-vm-tools. This will break
    some VMware features (like clipboard sharing with the host machine) so
    ideally you would not need to do this, but it provides a data point.

    I don't use VMware myself (most Debian developers probably do not) so
    this will probably have to be investigated further by someone who does.
    If the log has evidence of a problem with open-vm-tools, then this bug can/should be assigned to that package.

    smcv

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Bernd Zeimetz@21:1/5 to All on Wed Jul 16 13:00:02 2025
    XPost: linux.debian.devel

    Hi,

    * don't install vmware tools and open-vm-tools at the same time, they
    are the same thing.

    * did you install open-vm-tools-desktop? if not, do it.

    A quick look into the open-vm-tools code shows that wayland doesn't seem
    to be properly supported, it should not do anything then. But that code
    is in the desktop package, if you haven't installed that, nothing should
    change really.


    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

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Bernd Zeimetz@21:1/5 to Simon McVittie on Wed Jul 16 13:00:02 2025
    XPost: linux.debian.devel

    On 2025-07-16 10:49, Simon McVittie wrote:

    I don't use VMware myself (most Debian developers probably do not) so
    this will probably have to be investigated further by someone who does.
    If the log has evidence of a problem with open-vm-tools, then this bug can/should be assigned to that package.

    not even I use vmware for desktop machines - and unfortunately its
    rarely possible to fix things in open-vm-tools only as they often
    need changes in vmware, too.

    If the bug is in open-vm-tools (and so in the vmware tools), the best
    thing you can do is to open a support case at vmware.
    Keep in mind that Debian 13 is not yet supported by them...

    I would recommend to use kvm and libvirt.... and maybe proxmox.


    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

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)