RHEV 3.3 - Using SPICE HTML5 browser client for EL6 guests

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Even though it is a tech preview in RHEV 3.3, I have tried the SPICE HTML5 browser client with an EL6 guest.

I found that, after logging in to the EL6 guest, the GUI doesn't seem to know the location of the mouse pointer when there is a button press event. Wherever the mouse pointer happens to be, the GUI responds to the button press as if it was at the top left corner of the display.

However, you can restart the SPICE HTML5 client and then the button press events start working again. (Exit from the SPICE HTML5 client by closing the browser tab or window. Then, start a new client from the User or Admin Portal.)

The SPICE HTML5 client seems to work better in Google Chrome than in Firefox. Chrome has better performance and doesn't have problems with the '-' key.

AA
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rhn-support-anande's picture Red Hat Guru 1434 points
8 August 2014 11:39 AM

Hi Aram, (reading by your issue description) Not sure what exact chrome/FF version you are running.
But I would like you to have a look at the contents under On the client: section at https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Virtualization/3.4/html/Installation_Guide/sect-SPICE_Client.html also on the client that you are using, please go through Table 2.1

AA Expert 1152 points
14 August 2014 10:54 PM

Hi Anand, I have looked at the On the client: section in specified document.

It seems like Firefox and Chrome have had the WebSocket and postMessage APIs for quite a while. I am testing today with firefox-31.0-2.fc20.x86_64 and google-chrome-stable-36.0.1985.143-1.x86_64.

The "local" CA cert from RHEV-M (http://rhevm-fqdn/ca.crt) has been imported into both browsers.

The features listed in Table 2.1 don't seem to be related to the SPICE-HTML5 browser client.

I'm having worse results testing the SPICE-HTML5 browser client today. The display seems to stop updating after a few seconds when using either Firefox or Google Chrome.

AA Expert 1152 points
25 September 2014 4:18 PM

This is an update to my last post. I was experiencing issues when using the SPICE HTML5 browser client. The display would stop updating after just a few seconds.

This display update problem seems to have gone away after I re-installed the host with rhev-hypervisor6-6.5-20140821.1.

However, the issue with the mouse pointer location immediately after logging in persists with the new version of RHEV-H.

David Powles's picture Red Hat 25369 points
2 October 2014 1:43 PM

Understood, Aram. Thanks for the update. I'll see if I can track down some info on that.

AA Expert 1152 points
4 October 2014 12:34 PM

I have found an upstream patch that I believe fixes the mouse position issue in the SPICE HTML5 browser client in RHEV 3.3 that I described earlier.

It seems that the mouse location problem occurs when the SPICE server tells the client to change to "server mouse mode" which doesn't work well. The patch adds code which sends a message back to the server to request to change back to "client mouse mode".

A small portion of the changes in the upstream commit at the following URL implement the mouse mode fix.

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/spice/spice-html5/commit/?id=1d97ec7385d0c8992ef1ef629cf2549e3f9fbadd

All of the code for the fix is in main.js:

  • There is a new method named SpiceMainConn.prototype.handle_mouse_mode which makes the request to change mouse mode.

  • There is a modification to the SpiceMainConn.prototype.process_channel_message method to call handle_mouse_mode when a message of type SPICE_MSG_MAIN_MOUSE_MODE is received.

I believe that those two changes are sufficient to fix this issue. However, there is one more modification to SpiceMainConn.prototype.process_channel_message which could also be included. That modification includes a call to handle_mouse_mode when a message of type SPICE_MSG_MAIN_INIT is received.

AA Expert 1152 points
4 October 2014 1:01 PM

This is another upstream patch which I believe would improve the stability of the SPICE HTML5 browser client in RHEV 3.3.

The upstream commit is at the following URL:

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/spice/spice-html5/commit/?id=c2bb090b160c12680537b5b67e9d60ff944e3877

This patch has already been included in RHEV 3.4.

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