Prepare a Linux Machine for Remote Desktop Deployment

You must perform certain tasks to prepare a Linux machine for use as a desktop in a Horizon 7 deployment.

To prepare a Linux machine for management by Horizon 7, you must enable communication between the machine and the Connection Server. You must configure networking on the Linux machine so that the Linux machine can ping the Connection Server instance using its FQDN (fully qualified domain name).

Open VMware Tools (OVT) are pre-installed on RHEL, CentOS, and SLED/SLES machines. If you are preparing any of these machines for use as a remote desktop, you can skip steps 1 through 5 in the following procedure, which describe how to install VMware Tools by manually running the installer.

If you are using an Ubuntu machine, install OVT on it. If you are preparing this machine for use as a remote desktop, you can skip steps 1 through 5 in the following procedure and manually install OVT on your Ubuntu machine using the following command:

apt-get install open-vm-tools-desktop

Prerequisites

Verify that a new virtual machine (VM) was created in vCenter Server and your Linux distribution was installed on the machine.
Familiarize yourself with the steps for mounting and installing VMware Tools on a Linux VM. See "Manually Install or Upgrade VMware Tools in a Linux Virtual Machine" in the vSphere Virtual Machine Administration document.
Familiarize yourself with the steps for configuring your Linux machine to be resolvable through DNS. These steps vary for the different Linux distributions and releases. For instructions, consult the documentation for your Linux distribution and release.

Procedure

In vSphere Web Client or vSphere Client, mount the VMware Tools virtual disk on the VM.
Right-click the VMware Tools installer file, VMwareTools.x.x.x-xxxx.tar.gz, click Extract to, and select the desktop for your Linux distribution.
The vmware-tools-distrib folder is extracted to the desktop.
On the VM, log in as root and open a terminal window.
Uncompress the VMware Tools tar installer file.
For example:
```
tar zxpf /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-x.x.x-yyyy.tar.gz
```
Run the installer and configure VMware Tools.
The command might vary slightly in different Linux distributions. For example:
```
cd vmware-tools-distrib
sudo ./vmware-install.pl -d
```
Usually, the vmware-config-tools.pl configuration file runs after the installer file finishes running.
Map the Linux machine's host name to 127.0.0.1 in the /etc/hosts file.
For RHEL, CentOS, SLES, and SLED, you must manually map the host name to 127.0.0.1 because it is not automatically mapped. For Ubuntu, this step is not necessary because the mapping is there by default. This step is also not necessary when you bulk deploy desktops because the cloning process adds this mapping.
Note: If you change the Linux machine's host name after installing Horizon Agent, you must map the new host name to 127.0.0.1 in the /etc/hosts file. Otherwise, the old host name continues to be used.

For RHEL and CentOS, verify that virbr0 is disabled.

virsh net-destroy default
virsh net-undefine default
service libvirtd restart

Ensure that the Horizon Connection Server instances in the pod can be resolved through DNS.
Configure the Linux machine to run in graphical mode by default.
For example, the following command configures a CentOS machine to run in graphical mode.
```
systemctl set-default graphical.target
```
On an Ubuntu machine that was configured to authenticate with an OpenLDAP server, set the fully qualified domain name on the machine.
This step ensures that the information can be displayed correctly in the User field on the Sessions page in Horizon Console. Edit the /etc/hosts file as follows:
1. # nano /etc/hosts
2. Add the fully qualified domain name. For example: 127.0.0.1 hostname.domainname hostname.
3. Exit and save the file.
For SUSE, disable Change Hostname via DHCP. Set the hostname or domain name.
1. In Yast, click Network Settings.
2. Click the Hostname/DNS tab.
3. Deselect Change Hostname via DHCP.
4. Enter the hostname and the domain name.
5. Click OK.

Results

After installing VMware Tools, if you upgrade the Linux kernel, VMware Tools might stop running. To resolve the problem, see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2050592.