Oracle VDI Sun Ray Kiosk Session providers enable you to use an existing Sun Ray Kiosk Mode session type instead of a regular Oracle VDI desktop. A pool for a Sun Ray Kiosk Session provider enables you to specify arguments for the kiosk session. If a user, group or token is assigned to a kiosk pool, the kiosk session is listed on users' desktop selector screen as well as their regular Oracle VDI desktops. When the kiosk session ends, users are returned to the login screen.
Sun Ray Kiosk Session providers enable you to provide access to types of sessions that are not available with Oracle VDI itself, for example to connect to a remote desktop using a different broker such as the Sun Ray VMware View connector, or to provide access to a web-based application in a locked-down web browser.
Each Sun Ray Kiosk Session provider corresponds to one kiosk session type that is available in the Oracle VDI Center. Each pool connected to a Sun Ray Kiosk Session provider can have its own specific settings for the kiosk session, see Section 6.1.6, “How to Configure Kiosk Settings (Sun Ray Kiosk Provider)”.
The Sun Ray Kiosk Session provider makes some information available that can be used in kiosk session scripts to detect whether the kiosk session is being run by Oracle VDI. This is useful for integrating different kiosk sessions with Oracle VDI, for example to provide a single sign-on capability, or to make the different sessions operate as an integrated desktop where users have multiple desktops. The following information is available:
The user name of the logged
in Oracle VDI user is available in the
VDA_USER
environment variable.
The password of the Oracle VDI user can be read from standard input by the kiosk session process.
The domain of the logged in
Oracle VDI user is available in the
VDA_DOMAIN
environment variable.
The X11 display to use for
the kiosk session is available in the
VDA_DISPLAY
environment variable.
If this is not set, a full screen display on the current display is assumed.
The screen location in which
the kiosk session is displayed, in X11 geometry format, is
available in the VDA_GEOMETRY
environment
variable.
If this is set, the session runs in a window on the display
specified by VDA_DISPLAY
. If no geometry is
set, the session runs full-screen on the specified display.
The following is a simple example of how this information might be used in a kiosk session script.
theUser="$VDA_USER" thePassword= theDomain="$VDA_DOMAIN" theDisplay="$VDA_DISPLAY" theGeometry="$VDA_GEOMETRY" read thePassword
There are restrictions on the kiosk session types that can be used with Sun Ray Kiosk Session providers. Most of these are because Oracle VDI itself runs under Sun Ray Kiosk Mode. A kiosk session run by a Sun Ray Kiosk Session provider is a sub-process of the main Oracle VDI kiosk session. Note the following:
The Sun Java Desktop System 3 and the Common Desktop Environment kiosk types (available on Oracle Solaris platforms only) cannot be used with Oracle VDI, even though they can be selected for use with a Sun Ray Kiosk Session provider.
Kiosk session types that do not use the
VDA_DISPLAY
or VDA_GEOMETRY
environment variables to detect the Oracle VDI
session might not function correctly if users can access
multiple desktops.
Kiosk pre-session or post-session scripts that must be run by root are not supported.
Kiosk session types that have the
KIOSK_SESSION_PRE
or
KIOSK_SESSION_POST
keys set cannot be used with
Oracle VDI.
When the kiosk session exits, temporary files and folders in the kiosk user's home directory are not cleaned up. Do not use kiosk session types that create temporary files and folders, as these might affect other kiosk sessions of the same or different types.
Processes started as background processes by the kiosk session continue to run until the Oracle VDI session ends.
Kiosk commands and functions that operate on the kiosk session, operate on the containing Oracle VDI session, as follows:
The kioskrestart(1) command cannot be used to end a kiosk session. This command ends the entire Oracle VDI session.
Commands such as kioskparam(1) or kioskstatus(1) cannot be used to query the configuration or status of the kiosk session. These commands only report the parameters of the Oracle VDI kiosk session.
If the kiosk session starts any process as a critical process, the entire Oracle VDI session ends when the critical process exits. The kiosk sessions themselves are not run as critical processes.
Kiosk application lists do not work correctly with a kiosk session run by the Sun Ray Kiosk Session provider. Do not use "desktop-style" session types that support configurable application lists.