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DerekShaw
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

how to troubleshoot problem configuring vmware tools? - ubuntu server 10.04. 64-bit guest on esxi 4.1

I am migrating a bunch of VMs that have been running under vmware player 3.x to an esxi 4.1 host.

I've had good success so far, but on one of them I've bumped into an issue I can't troubleshoot.

This VM is an ubuntu server as described in the subject.

Some background

-- Before moving the VM to the esxi server. I removed the vmware tools and scrubbed the VM of all traces of them.

-- I moved the VM "manually" -- I used vdiskmanager to convert/copy the .vmdk files to the esxi server, then used the vsphere client to move the .vmx file

-- I used vmkfstools to clone the .vmdk files into "thin-provisioned" format.

-- the VM came up without difficulty on the esxi host.

The problem occurs in the 'configure' phase of the vmware tools installation.  As far as I can see it proceeds normally until the end, when this appears:

Creating a new initrd boot image for the kernel.

update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-34-server

Starting VMware Tools services in the virtual machine:

   Switching to guest configuration:                                   done

   Paravirtual SCSI module:                                            done

   Guest memory manager:                                               done

   VM communication interface:                                         done

   VM communication interface socket family:                           done

   Guest operating system daemon:                                     failed

   Virtual Printing daemon:                                            done

Unable to start services for VMware Tools


Execution aborted.

I've un-installed, scrubbed, re-installed and spent considerable time googling, but I can find nothing that even scratches the surface. The system logs show nothing of note.

From my googling, there seems to be a high correlation between "shared folders", hgfs, and this particular failure. That was probably with people using workstation and player -- I have no need for shared folders/hgfs, so if they are connected with this problem, I'd happily disable them, if possible.

What I *do* need is for esxi to be able to manage memory and CPU properly for this VM, since it's idle 99.999% of the time, so I'd really like to be able to install vmware tools on it.

Where to from here?

thanks in advance for any help!

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