VMware Horizon – Upgrade Horizon Linux Agent to v. 2206

Release date: September 5th 2022

Welcome to my VMware Horizon series. In this session I will describe how I upgraded the VMware Horizon Linux Agent in my template to v. 2206. In this session I will describe the process for upgrading the VMware Horizon Agent for my Linux Multi-session Desktop Farm to v.2206. According to VMware’s official documentation, this should be done as step 11 in the supported update sequence.

When I power up the Ubuntu Golden Template and login, I see the option to upgrade to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

According to VMware’s documentation, Supported Guest Operating Systems for Horizon Linux Agent for Horizon 8 2103 and Later (87277), this version isn’t supported, but the Release Notes for Horizon 8 2206, says it is. Anyway, doing an in-place upgrade is not advisable, so I will stick to the 20.04 version and upgrade the Horizon Agent as show below.

Before I start the actual Horizon Agent upgrade, I will download and install Ubuntu updates using the following commands:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo reboot
sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt autoclean

Next, once the VM is powered up, I open VMware Remote Console and log in. I start by downloading the installation media from VMware Customer Connect

Once downloaded, I unpack it in the Downloads folder

Next, I log out from the desktop and reboot to ensure the VMwareBlastServer process isn’t running

Before I can Putty into the desktop I need to know the IP address

I check the documentation to determine the correct command line options to use during upgrade here: Command-Line Options for Installing Horizon Agent for Linux

I connect using Putty and run the following command to upgrade:

sudo ./install_viewagent.sh -A yes -M yes --multiple-session -r yes

Once the installer is finished, it automatically reboots the VM. I can now adjust some options, shown below.

Setting Options in Configuration Files on a Linux Desktop

I will be adjusting the following parameters in the “/etc/vmware/config” file

#Set clipboard redirection. Default is 2. 0 means disable; 1 means both directions; 2 means from client to agent only, 3 means from agent to client only.
Clipboard.Direction=1

#Set clipboard maximum size which should be specified in KBytes. Default is 1024 KBytes.
mksvchan.clipboardSize=1024

#Enable/Disable display scaling. This option only works if DPI sync feature is enabled.
Display scaling resizes the screen to auto fit the font size when the DPI is a mismatch between client and agent, the default value is FALSE.
rdeSvc.allowDisplayScaling=TRUE

I will be adjusting the following parameters in the “/etc/vmware/viewagent-custom.conf” file

#Enable/Disable CDR. Default is TRUE
CDREnable=FALSE

#Enable/Disable USB. Default is TRUE
USBEnable=FALSE

#Enable/Disable Help Desk Tool. Default is TRUE
HelpDeskEnable=FALSE

#Instant Clone offline domain join solution, default value is 'pbis'.
#Its value could be 'pbis', 'samba' or 'none', and 'none' means disable.
#OfflineJoinDomain=none
OfflineJoinDomain=pbis
#OfflineJoinDomain=samba

Finally, I shut down the VM, take a Snapshot and deploy this to my Desktop and Application Farm. Once the Push-operation is done, I can verify the agent version in my virtual desktops

This completes the Linux Horizon Agent upgrade. I can now proceed with upgrading the Horizon GPO Bundle, posted here: VMware Horizon – Upgrade Horizon GPO Bundle to v. 2206

Official VMware Documentation about this topic:

Upgrade Horizon Agent on a Linux Virtual Machine

VMware Horizon – Upgrades

VMware Horizon planning, deployment etc.

Official VMware Horizon 8 Documentation

Disclaimer: Every tips/tricks/posting I have published here, is tried and tested in different it-solutions. It is not guaranteed to work everywhere, but is meant as a tip for other users out there. Remember, Google is your friend and don’t be afraid to steal with pride! Feel free to comment below as needed.