VMware Communities : Unanswered Threads - vSphere SDK for Perl

Authentication timed out?

LarsOeschey — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:25:30 GMT

Hi,

I'm trying to snapshot some VM's via vcbmounter.exe from a perl script. The first backup works fine, but on the second I got a authentication failure. I use this code in the beginning of the script for authentication (how do code tags work here?):

eval {Vim::login(
service_url => $service_url,
user_name => $username,
password => $password);
};
if ($@) {
# error
print LOG $@ . "\n";
}

This seems to work, since the first VM gets backup'ed. It takes about 1:15h, since in the first run I got an error about it not being able two write back the backup date to a custom field, I added exactly the same authentication into the loop after the backup. So the login should be valid when the next one starts. However I do get a

SOAP Fault:

Fault string: Die Sitzung wurde nicht authentifiziert.
Fault detail: NotAuthenticatedFault

(the first one translates into "session not authenticated")

Before I had added the additional authenication into the loop, I just would get a "Unable to find VM name" from this within the loop:

my $vm = Vim::find_entity_view(view_type => 'VirtualMachine',
filter => {"config.name" => $_});
unless ($vm) {
print "Unable to find VM: \"$_\"!\n";
exit 1
}

So it seems the authentication works fine for the first backup, and then times out. But why does the same authentication code from the start of the script not work again? How would I reauthenticate?

I've attached the script if anyone wants to take a look...

Lars

MOB equivalent to Vim::find_entity_views?

skayser — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:57:48 GMT

Greetings,

i have started using the Managed Object Browser on a vCenter 4 installation to explore the object structure of the API, but i haven't been able to find VM objects so far. Could someone kindly point me to where i can find / query VM instances in the MOB. Similar to what i would do via Vim::find_entity_views.

Thanks

Sebastian

Error: Server version unavailable at 'https://1.1.1.1/sdk/vimService.wsdl' when connecting to virtual center with connect.pl

likid000 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:12:05 GMT

Hi,

I have a strange problem, I have 3 RHEL 5.4 servers that are clones of each other, I have install the SDK on all 3 of them, version:

I have installed VMware-vSphere-SDK-for-Perl-4.0.0-161974

and on 2 servers whith connect.pl it works great:

/usr/lib/vmware-vcli/apps/general/connect.pl --server 1.1.1.1 --username XXX --password XX

Connection Successful
Server Time : 2009-11-04T11:53:30.449415Z

On the third server it doesn't work:

/usr/lib/vmware-vcli/apps/general/connect.pl --server 1.1.1.1 --username XXX --password XX

Error: Server version unavailable at 'https://1.1.1.1/sdk/vimService.wsdl'

I am connecting to a VC with esx 3.5, on the third server I can access the url 'https://1.1.1.1/sdk/vimService.wsdl' with no problems

Any idea what can be the problem ?

Thnx

Can't get disk.totalLatency.average performance counter

luger_lee — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:51:43 GMT

Hi

I have a task to make a command used for collecting many of performance data.

The command failed for lack of disk.totalLatency.average performance counter in all of virtual machines. The target is a ESX 4.0 server host, and vSphare SDK for perl has been used.

Any hint is precious to me.

Thanks in advance.

Problem with rdmCreate.pl

ii00907 — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:42:57 GMT

Hi,

i have a problem with Perl Script rdmCreate.pl.

If I create a new disk rdm puntanto all 'esx4, the disc that I am going to add it correctly deal. This is the command;

~~root@ITRMVSC1 vm~~# perl rdmCreate.pl --url https://172.33.22.111/sdk/vimService --username MYUSER --password MYPSW --vmname VM1 --filename Test.vmdk --backingtype rdm

Adding Virtual Disk on Virtual machine VM1 in the host esxhost.it.domain.com with file name Test.vmdk

env browser

*****
ARRAY(0x1fe9eb90)
*****

*****
number of present disks is 2
*****
ITRMVSC Disk[0]: Capacity /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6006016055351f00516decc0459cde11
cannonical_name: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6006016055351f00516decc0459cde11VM1 Disk[1]: Capacity /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6006016055351f00506decc0459cde11
cannonical_name: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6006016055351f00516decc0459cde11
calling the reconfigure VM

returned from reconfigure VM
Virtual Disk created.

but when I try to point the Virtual Center back to me the following error;

perl rdmCreate.pl --url https://172.55.22.444/sdk/webService --username administrator --password MYPSW --vmname VM1 --filename Test.vmdk --backingtype rdm

Adding Virtual Disk on Virtual machine ITRMVSC in the host 172.33.22.111 with file name Test.vmdk
env browser

*****
ARRAY(0xb5a20d0)
*****

*****
number of present disks is 2
*****
ITRMVSC Disk[0]: Capacity /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6006016055351f00516decc0459cde11
cannonical_name: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6006016055351f00516decc0459cde11ITRMVSC Disk[1]: Capacity /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6006016055351f00506decc0459cde11
cannonical_name: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6006016055351f00516decc0459cde11
calling the reconfigure VM
Error trapped
SOAP Fault:

Fault string: Invalid datastore path 'Test.vmdk'.
Fault detail: InvalidDatastorePathFalut :
SOAP Fault:

Fault string: Invalid datastore path 'Test.vmdk'.

My version ESX : VMware ESX 4.0.0 build-164009

My version Vsphere : VMware vCenter Server Version 4.0.0 Build 162856

vSpher CLI Version : VMware vSphere CLI 4.0.0-161974.x86_64

Please help me.

Attached the script I use

Set permission on a particular datastore on ESXi

Dexxt0r — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:08:12 GMT

Hi all,

I'm developping an application using vSphere SDK for Perl. But i'm struggling with the following problem:

Let's say we have 2 users: A and B. Both have accounts on ESXi. Each user is assigned his own datastore.

When A connects to ESXi by VI Client to upload files to his datastore, he can browse B's datastore and even delete B's files.

What i want is that A can browse only his own datastore.

Anyone have ideas how to do it by using vSphere SDK? Please help!

Best regards,

Anh-Tu

Updated vCenter, now perl scripts get SOAP error "500 EOF when chunk header expected"

david_drew — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:30:28 GMT

We've got some reporting scripts that do a number of things, generate alerts and save performance info, etc. vCenter was upgraded this weekend and all of the scripts are failing--occasionally--with this error. At least one of the scripts is pretty light, it doesn't pull that much information, though it does it for hundreds of VMs.

This is using VI Perl 1.6.

Any help would be appreciated.

-David

ShutDown / PowerOn VMs

EXPRESS — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:05:50 GMT

Hi All,

I like that. How can I apply that so it can work for me? I am not a programmer or developer so that should tell you that I don't know much about scripting, but I think I can play around with it enough to get it going. What I would like to do is a weekly ShutDown then a PowerOn afterwards. Any chance you guys can help me with this? Any help would be appreciated. The way I am doing it right now which is so time consuming is to setup a schedule task for each VM via Virtual Center for ShutDown then again for PowerOn. I just would like to simplify this as much as possible.

I just want to add that we are on an ESX 3.5.0 server and 2.5 VC.

"I posted the this to one of the forums, but I noticed that that forum had been answered already and I did not know if I should just create a new discussion. Sry if I shouldn't have.."

Again any help will be appreciated.

Thank you,
Express

CopyDatastoreFile_Task does not work

r123 — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:17:34 GMT

Hello,

I need to copy virtual disks (or files) between datastores in VI. I am using VMware Infrastructure (VI) API for perl or vSphere SDK for Perl 4.0. Initialy I tried to use CopyVirtualDisk_Task, but it apeared that it works just with ESX servers not virtual center. Then I tried to use CopyDatastoreFile_Task. CopyDatastoreFile_Task works very strange. When copying vmdk files it just creates very small file in destination - I think that it is some kind of reference to original file. Why it is so? How can I copy file or disk with vSphere SDK for Perl 4.0?

Following code is used in perl script to do the copy.

my $service_content = Vim::get_service_content();
my $file_mgr = Vim::get_view(mo_ref => $service_content->fileManager);
$file_mgr->waitForTask($file_mgr->CopyDatastoreFile_Task(sourceName => $SourceName,sourceDatacenter => $SourceDatacenter,destinationName => $DestName,destinationDatacenter => $DestDatacenter));

Regards,
Roberts

AddDVPortgroup error

duyuyang — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 05:33:59 GMT

Hi,

When I add a VMware distributed virtual portgroup, it failed, fault string indicates that: Not initialized: boolean inherited.

Can anyone explain it to me? Any sample code?

Thanks,

Shawn

remove a VM and rename a VM

LuffyDLiu — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 03:06:49 GMT

Dear all,

Is it possible to provide a perl function to remove a VM through VC?

My ESX is managed by VC serve, I saw a createVM.pl, just want to know if removeVM.pl is available?

BTW, if there is some method to rename a VM name, I only saw the perl function for rename datastorage.

Is it also possible?

Thanks a lot,

Luffy

check tools status doesn't return the good value

gierone — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:04:46 GMT

Hello,

I want to check vmware tool status of my virtual machines so I use this fonction $vm_views->guest->ToolsStatus->val. When I test this function returns always "toolsOk" even when I stop the vmware tools service on the service console of windows. Why this function doesn't return "toolsNotRunning" ?

Thank you.

openSSL certificate verification

kef461 — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 22:40:40 GMT

I have seen others talk about this issue but they never stated what resolved their problem.

Problem: When you do a connect.pl from the Perl utilities and get Error: Server version unavailable at 'https://asciesx1/sdk/vimService.wsdl'. If you do a wget it returns.

~~16:02:15~~ https://asciesx1/sdk/vimService.wsdl
Resolving asciesx1... 172.29.59.25
Connecting to asciesx1|172.29.59.25|:443... connected.
ERROR: cannot verify asciesx1's certificate, issued by `/C=US/ST=California/L=Palo Alto/O=VMware, Inc./emailAddress=ssl-certificates@vmware.com/OU=VMware ESX Server Certificate/CN=asciesx1/unstructuredName=1250522187,564d7761726520496e632e':
Self-signed certificate encountered.
To connect to asciesx1 insecurely, use `--no-check-certificate'.
Unable to establish SSL connection.

I have tried to configure openssl and give the ca certificate to the client machine so that it could use it for verifying. These are self-signed certificates.

VMWareTools version provided by the host

kri-2 — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:50:10 GMT

Hi,

is there a way to get the version number of the VMWare Tools (e.g. 110268, 123630,...) from a host_view that are provided by the host?

Thanks in advance!

Chris

If you need any sample code to get started, make a request here!

navadavuluri — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:23:39 GMT

Need a sample code, then submit your request here: CodeCentral Sample Code Request Box

We assure you that all the requests will be processed promptly.

For more information on how this works: Learn about Sample Code Request Box and CodeCentral Feedback

VMware API Perl Toolkit Install Issue

softential — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:07:50 GMT

I am trying to install Perl API Toolkit on one of the linux VM and below is the error I get.

Does anyone know what is the problem? Does this mean I can not install the toolkit on the virtual guests, in that case where should this be installed.

V# ./vmware-install.pl
You cannot install VMware VIPerl Toolkit on a system running a xen
kernel.Execution aborted.

Changes to the ESX Service Console for ESX 4.0

navadavuluri — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:38:09 GMT

Please check out the attched document for information

This technical paper discusses incompatibilities between the ESX 3.5 service
console and the ESX 4.0 service console. Included are suggestions of what you might do to upgrade your
existing environments that depend on the ESX service console. This document also discusses how you might
bridge the gap to support ESXi, which does not include a service console. And finally, if you are currently
writing applications that run in the ESX service console, this document suggests some possible options you
have for transitioning away from it.

Problem with VMInfo.pl

DrewGator — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:15:46 GMT

I'm writing a script that needs to query for the datastore used by the disk files for a specific VM. I found that the VMInfo.pl script would accomplish this so to test I issued the following command at a command prompt:

vminfo.pl --url https://vcserver/sdk/webservice --username vcadmin --password ***** --vmname vmname --fields vmPathName

Unfortunately, the only response I get is:

Virtual Machine vmname not found.

I've verified that the VM exists and is running. I've tried it with several different VMs that I know exist and it isn't working.

The odd thing is that it worked the other day...

vSphere SDK on SLES 11 or Debian Lenny

davidhaase — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:21:36 GMT

Hi *,

I wonder if SLES 11 will become a supported platform for the SDK some time.
We already managed to get things running but the performance is very poor.
An "strace" on a script returns about 15.000 system calls with the following statement:

stat64("/usr/lib/perl/5.10/auto/Class/MethodMaker/Engine/ima_method_maker.al", 0xbfa2ca54) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

SLES 11 uses Perl 5.10 and I found out, that the class method "ima_method_maker" is deprecated now.
Any ideas? Btw. same problems with Debian5 (Lenny).

Cheers
David

Pedo mellon a minno --

Simple create VM script not working

repl1cant — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:26:24 GMT

Howdy folks,

I'm trying to create a simple create VM script from the ground up and I can't for the life of me find out what's wrong. The error I keep on getting is:

SOAP Fault:

Fault string: A component of the virtual machine is not accessible on the host.
Fault detail: CannotAccessVmComponent

I've tried to trim it down as much as possible to try and figure out this last issue. I took out the deviceChange portion and still get the same error. I also tried changing the datastore name to verify the format of it, and that was not the issue either as it complained .. Also, in the version I pasted below I put the var's directly in the create_vm_spec function as well .. Help!!!

use strict;
use VMware::VIRuntime;

my $vc = 'x.x.x.x';
my $vc_un = 'username';
my $vc_pw = 'password';
my $host = 'hostname';

$vc = "https://$vc:443/sdk/vimService";

Util::connect($vc,$vc_un,$vc_pw);

my $host_view = get_esx_host($host);
my $dc_view = get_datacenter("datacenter");
my $folder = $dc_view->vmFolder;

my $folder_view = Vim::get_view(mo_ref =>; $dc_view->vmFolder);
my $comp_view = Vim::get_view(mo_ref => $host_view->parent);

my $spec = create_vm_spec();

eval {
$folder_view->CreateVM(
config =>$spec,
pool =>$comp_view->resourcePool
);
};

print $@;

Util::disconnect();

# creates object for a given host
sub get_esx_host {
my $host = shift;
return Vim::find_entity_view(
view_type => 'HostSystem',
filter => {
name => qr/$host/i
}
);
}

# creates an object for a given dc
sub get_datacenter {
my $dc = shift;
return Vim::find_entity_view(
view_type => 'Datacenter',
filter => {
name => qr/$dc/i
}
);
}

# create vm spec, see below for params
sub create_vm_spec {

my $name = "testMe";
my $cpus = 1;
my $mem_size = 256;
my $guest_os = "rhel4Guest";
my $ds_name = "datastore";

my $ds_path = "$ds_name";

# create a ref for the location of the vm files
my $files = VirtualMachineFileInfo->new(
logDirectory => undef,
snapshotDirectory => undef,
suspendDirectory => undef,
vmPathName => $ds_path
);

# and for the grand finalie, lets create the vm spec!!!!!!!
my $vm_spec = VirtualMachineConfigSpec->new(
name => $name,
memoryMB => $mem_size,
files => $files,
numCPUs => $cpus,
guestId => $guest_os
);

return $vm_spec;

}

VI Perl Toolkit using a lot of CPU (hundreds of thousands of calls to libXML)

MartinWi — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:25:00 GMT

Hi there,

We are using the VI Perl Toolkit to run scripts for monitoring and graphing our ESX as well as our ESXi hosts, some directly and others via Virtual Center. We are doing this on a Centos 5.3 host with toolkit 1.6. For some reason the toolkit is however consuming quite a lot of CPU, which means we cannot run the scripts on as many hosts as we would like, even though the monitor host is a dual quad core machine. I am not much of a developer myself, but I have ran Dprof and dprofpp on the script we're using, check_esx3.pl by op5, and also the sample script provided by vmware, datacenterlisting.pl, to find anything similar. Both of them seem to be making hundreds of thousands of calls to libXML, which is what's consuming all that CPU time. I have also tried doing this on the new vMA platform, which is running toolkit 4.0 with the same result.

So what I would like to know is; how can we make our scripts execute faster when the toolkit itself is so slow?

Output from dprofpp running datacenterlisting.pl:

dprofpp tmon.out

Total Elapsed Time = 12.25789 Seconds
User+System Time = 6.547893 Seconds
Exclusive Times
%Time ExclSec CumulS #Calls sec/call Csec/c Name
30.0 1.969 8.716 25888 0.0001 0.0003 ComplexType::deserialize
28.0 1.838 5.688 148014 0.0000 0.0000 XML::LibXML::Element::getChildrenByTagName
27.9 1.828 1.828 111179 0.0000 0.0000 XML::LibXML::Node::nodeName
19.4 1.272 1.272 148014 0.0000 0.0000 XML::LibXML::Node::_childNodes
7.70 0.504 1.776 148014 0.0000 0.0000 XML::LibXML::Node::childNodes
6.23 0.408 0.408 121601 0.0000 0.0000 XML::LibXML::Node::textContent
5.99 0.392 0.392 112826 0.0000 0.0000 XML::LibXML::Node::DESTROY
4.87 0.319 1.041 2 0.1595 0.5205 Vim::login
4.29 0.281 0.281 69100 0.0000 0.0000 XML::LibXML::Element::getAttributeNodeNS
3.34 0.219 0.550 2625 0.0001 0.0002 Class::MethodMaker::Engine::create_methods
2.52 0.165 0.202 2625 0.0001 0.0001 Class::MethodMaker::scalar::scal0000
2.28 0.149 0.149 1161 0.0001 0.0001 Crypt::SSLeay::Conn::read
1.99 0.130 0.130 10 0.0130 0.0130 XML::LibXML::_parse_string
1.70 0.111 0.137 24388 0.0000 0.0000 DynamicData::get_property_list
0.92 0.060 0.118 22 0.0027 0.0054 main::BEGIN

Output from running dprofpp on check_esx3.pl:

# dprofpp tmon.out
Total Elapsed Time = 6.755634 Seconds
User+System Time = 2.915634 Seconds
Exclusive Times
%Time ExclSec CumulS #Calls sec/call Csec/c Name
28.6 0.834 1.881 33053 0.0000 0.0001 XML::LibXML::Element::getChildrenByTagName
21.8 0.636 0.636 247000 0.0000 0.0000 XML::LibXML::Node::nodeName
15.4 0.449 2.543 5611 0.0001 0.0005 ComplexType::deserialize
9.23 0.269 1.086 2 0.1347 0.5428 Vim::login
8.40 0.245 0.575 2625 0.0001 0.0002 Class::MethodMaker::Engine::create_methods
6.28 0.183 0.183 33053 0.0000 0.0000 XML::LibXML::Node::_childNodes
5.38 0.157 0.206 2625 0.0001 0.0001 Class::MethodMaker::scalar::scal0000
4.63 0.135 0.135 249895 0.0000 0.0000 XML::LibXML::Node::DESTROY
4.01 0.117 0.300 33053 0.0000 0.0000 XML::LibXML::Node::childNodes
2.85 0.083 0.083 14278 0.0000 0.0000 XML::LibXML::Element::getAttributeNodeNS
2.33 0.068 0.115 863 0.0001 0.0001 Net::SSL::read
2.16 0.063 0.098 2625 0.0000 0.0000 Class::MethodMaker::Engine::install_methods
1.92 0.056 0.056 27375 0.0000 0.0000 XML::LibXML::Node::textContent
1.85 0.054 0.062 5641 0.0000 0.0000 DynamicData::get_property_list
1.68 0.049 0.049 2625 0.0000 0.0000 Class::MethodMaker::Engine::check_opts

Any hints/clues much appreciated.