P2V of Centos Server fails with key can't be retrieved

[gparker]

Hi,

I'm running Converter Standalone version 5.1.0 and am attempting to P2V a physical Centos 5.3 server to my vSphere 5.1 environment. When the conversion job kicks-off, the helper VM is created, it powers on and boots up ok, the job log says "Connected to the Converter helper server on the destination virtual machine" and then the helper VM powers off and deletes and the job fails with the message "Failed at 1%. A general system error has occurred: Network error. Host <hostname of source machine> key can't be retrieved (return code 2)".

I am able to SSH to the server and login as root without a problem. When Converter initially connects to the machine when I'm setting up the job, it retrieves all it's details OK and shows me all its configuration information OK etc. I'm thinking that the "key can't be retrieved" in the failure message is the clue, but I don't know what "key can't be retrieved" means.

HELP!

Regards,

George.

[ivivanov]

Most likely you need to edit hosts.allow and hosts.deny on the source server to allow connection both from Converter Server machine *and* from the subnet where destination virtual machine is created.

[gparker]

Hi Ivivanov,

Thanks for your help. I just looked at the /etc/hosts.allow and the /etc/hosts.deny files on the source server and neither of them contain any entries in them at all. Do I still need to edit both these files as you suggest? I'm running Converter Standalone on the same machine that vCenter is running on. The subnet of the source server and the subnet of the vCenter/Converter server and the subnet of the helper VM is all on the same subnet. I tried running the conversion job with the helper VM set to obtain a DHCP address and again using a fixed address, but both times it failed exactly the same way at the same point as I describe in my first post.

George.

[AlexNS84]

Hello all,

I'm dealing with the very same problem. I get the mentioned error even though I can connect through SSH, IPtables firewall is disabled and hosts.allow and hosts.deny are empty. Both machines, the Helper VM and the physical machine where the source VM is running on VMware Workstation, are in the same network.

It is true that this is not a P2V really, but It is the same problem in the end. Any help will be much appreciated!

Regards,

Alex.

PD: I fixed it changing the source VM networking to bridged in VMware Workstation and making sure the source and helper VM were going to be able to resolve the name of the host were the helper VM was going to be deployed, inside vCenter. So, I suggest to make sure all the physical and virtual machines are in the same network and able to resolve all the names. Hope this helps somebody.

[gparker]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your suggestion. When you say to make sure the helper VM can resolve the name of the ESXi host, how do I do this? In my scenario, the helper VM deletes itself as soon as the job fails.

Are you using version 5.1.0 of Converter Standalone too? Last November I did a successful Linux P2V using the version of Converter prior to 5.1.0. If I can still get my hands on that earlier version, I'm going to try it out on this one and will let you all know how I get on.

Thanks,

George.

[gparker]

Hi all,

I deployed a new Windows box and installed Converter 5.0.1 onto it and it's P2V-ing my CentOs server ok so far I noticed that 5.0.1 configures the VM with hardware v7 whereas 5.1.0 configures it with hardware v9, so perhaps this is the problem? As soon as the conversion's finished I'm going to re-run the job on 5.1.0 and select hardware v7 and will let you know how it goes.

George.

[AlexNS84]

Hi George,

I used 5.1 too. Sure you can pick HW v7 but the problem we were dealing with was a networking problem so, I'm not sure what's happening in your case ...

Regards,

Alex

[homerzzz]

Selecting HW v7 allows the P2V to complete successfully with Converter 5.1. I had the same "key can't be retrieved" error when HW v9 was selected.

[gparker]

Thanks for your comment. I can confirm that since the P2V of my CentOS server using HW v7 a few weeks ago now, the VM has been operating flawlessly

[ivivanov]

Identified the possible reasons for failure along with the network configuration on the source (host.allow/hosts.deny):

Host SSH server is not using RSA protocol 2 keys. If it uses only DSA or RSA1 keys, then Converter cannot connect to the source (it is a bug in the product introduced in version 5.1). You can check this configuration in your sshd config file (by default under /etc/ssh/sshd_config).

I don't have a clue how the hardware version on the destination can affect this behavior.

[alstarian123]

I changed the source from the DNS name to the IP and it worked for me too!