VMware View USB service not working in Silverblue toolbox

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1

I decided to try Fedora Silverblue when I purchased a new computer after years with Ubuntu variants at home and RHEL at work, and I’m mostly happy after a bit of a learning curve. However, I’m running into one problem I can’t solve. I occasionally need to use the VMware Horizon Client (vmware-view) for work reasons. And I need USB forwarding for a Yubikey when i do it.

I installed vmware-view via the instructions here (with usbEnable turned on), and it starts when I run it inside my toolbox. However, it always show USB as unavailable. That’s when i started looking through the logs. I saw this inside /tmp/vmware-wilee8/vmware-view-usbd-275913.log:

2023-11-24T16:48:14.960Z In(05) vmware-usbd Starting...
2023-11-24T16:48:14.960Z In(05) vmware-usbd ViewUsbService started
2023-11-24T16:48:14.960Z In(05) vmware-usbd USBArbLib: USBArbLib initialized successfully, retryIntervalStart(5), retryIntervalMax(120), arbSocketName(/var/run/vmware/usbarbitrator-socket), useLocking(yes), tryUpgrading(no).
2023-11-24T16:48:14.960Z In(05) vmware-usbd UsbEnum: Initializing UsbEnum library, disableLocking(yes), allowBootableHid(yes).
2023-11-24T16:48:14.960Z In(05) vmware-usbd SOCKET creating new socket, connecting to /var/run/vmware/usbarbitrator-socket
2023-11-24T16:48:14.960Z In(05) vmware-usbd SOCKET connect failed, error 2: No such file or directory
2023-11-24T16:48:14.960Z Wa(03) vmware-usbd USBArbLib: Failed to connect to USB Arbitrator, arbSocketname(/var/run/vmware/usbarbitrator-socket). Error(0x6): Connection error.
2023-11-24T16:48:14.960Z Wa(03) vmware-usbd USBArbLib: OUT SET_AUTO_CONNECT: Not connected to arbitrator, autoconnect(0) for client 'USBD275913', connectState(0).
2023-11-24T16:48:14.960Z In(05) vmware-usbd SOCKET creating new socket, connecting to /var/run/vmware/usbarbitrator-socket
2023-11-24T16:48:14.960Z In(05) vmware-usbd SOCKET connect failed, error 2: No such file or directory
2023-11-24T16:48:14.960Z Wa(03) vmware-usbd USBArbLib: Failed to connect to USB Arbitrator, arbSocketname(/var/run/vmware/usbarbitrator-socket). Error(0x6): Connection error.

So it looks like vmware-view starts a USB daemon, which tries to connect to vmware-view via a socket. And then this socket fails to connect because… something something containers?

I have some familiarity with containers and Podman, so I know socket connections and networking can be different. What would I need to do when running vmware-view inside toolbox in order to get the socket connection to work? Are there permissions I need to set when running inside toolbox?

2

This really appears to be a vmware issue (proprietary software) so other than experience we may not be able to assist much.

You do not tell us much about the details.
Is vmware running on the host? or only inside the toolbox? The difference may be critical.

3

VMware Horizon Client (vmware-view) is client software that runs on the host and connects to a remote server to display it. I installed it it inside a toolbox (fc38) running on my laptop (Fedora Silverblue 39). One of the features of vmware-view is that it’s supposed to forward USB devices on my laptop to the remote server.

So, what I think is happening is that vmware-view is trying to run a USB daemon (/usr/bin/vmware-view-usbd) that connects to a socket on the USB arbitrator service from vmware-view. But, as the logs for vmware-view-usbd that I posted above show, it looks like daemon can’t connect to the arbitrator socket. So, the question is: Why can’t vmware-view-usbd connect to the socket? Is it because of something with containerization. Both things should be running inside the toolbox.