Hmm, tried single quoting the /path/to/vmx bit?

Is there any reason why you can not take what "vmware-cmd -l" returns to you and run a getstate on that given VM? I would just run a for loop across all VMs and as it provides you with the path to the .vmx file, just do a getstate and then you can pretty print it or just output VM Name and State. This way you don't have to worry about the case sensitively of the command, I was always under the impression it was case sensitive.

Are you doing something similar:

#!/bin/bash

IFS=$'\n'
echo -e "VM_NAME\t\tSTATE"
for i in `vmware-cmd -l`;
do
        VM_NAME=`vmware-cmd "$i" getconfig displayname | awk '{print $3}'`
        STATE=`vmware-cmd "$i" getstate | awk '{print $3}'`
        echo -e "${VM_NAME}\t\t${STATE}"
done
unset IFS

Give this a try and see if it works and if not, try doing "sh -x script.sh" to see what attributes are being passed in.

Did you ever figure this out? I am running into the exact same problem... I am taking the exact output from the vmware-cmd.pl script and put it into the subsequent call to vmware-cmd.pl, and still I get "No virtual machine found"... for eaxample:

/vmfs/volumes/483411be-874070d6-23e8-001d09709fa3/VM/39854/039854-aeolus-w2k3.vmx (this is the output from the -l invocation)

vmware-cmd.pl -H vmconsole1.electric-cloud.com -U root -P password /vmfs/volume/483411be-874070d6-23e8-001d09709fa3/VM/39854/039854-aeolus-w2k3.vmx getstate
No virtual machine found

I tried with quotes around the .vmx file name (which shold not make any difference as there are no spaces in the path), and that indeed did't change anything. If I log in to the server I can do an ls on the file and it's there, with proper permissions... the server is a Linux box.

Thanks,
Sven