CD/DVD Drive: "Connected - client unknown"

[davidbarclay]

Hi,

Strange one that I have never seen before. I have a VM that was migrated from 2.5 to 3.01 using VMware Convertor (which does the virtual hardware upgrade and tools install).

I can't vMotion the VM because the CD drive is connected. However it's not! the CD device shows as "Connected - client unknown" in the VI3 client. See the image below:

<a href="http://tinypic.com" target="_blank">!http://i16.tinypic.com/440q3w4.jpg|alt=Image and video hosting by TinyPic|src=http://i16.tinypic.com/440q3w4.jpg|border=0!</a>

We have tried to remove the device, restart and add it again - and it still comes up as "Connected - client unknown".

The floppy device does the same thing.

During all this I am the only user with a VI3 client connected. Ideas?

Dave

[Rumple]

I would restart the VC agent on the ESX Server. I've had that probelm and that resolved the issue

The other thing I've had to do is make sure when clicking to client device, before clicking ok, to check PAssthrough IDE (its defaulted to emulate IDE) and I haven't had a problem since (I can recreate the problem sometimes by mounting multiple VM's to the same Cdrom drive as well. )

[Rumple]

damn, double post again

Message was edited by:

Rumple

[davidbarclay]

That doesn't help unfortunately, we tried all that including reboots.

We migrated more 2.5 VMs today and another one is doing it. So that's 2 out of about 20.....weird.

I have just removed floppy and cdroms from them for now (so vmotion/drs/ha work). But I would love a solution to this.

Dave

[wila]

Check the associated .vmx file for this VM.

It is likely that this VM has devicenames in there which aren't for ESX.

[davidbarclay]

Nice idea, but they are clean.

Also confirmed

virtualHW.version = "4"

is correct.

David

[genusplc]

just had this same issue.

Powered off the VM

Edit settings, deleted the CD drive,

Edited the .vmx, and deleted all lines that started ide0:0

Edit settings again, recreated the CD drive

Power back on

worked

[alessandro116]

Hi,

I had the same Problem 5 minutes ago and solved it. How?

1.) I think the problem initially came up after I tried to install VMWARE-TOOLS on a Linux SLES 10 machine I am preparing...

2.) After that I wanted to install gcc on the machine, but I wasnt able to disconnect 😧 (unknown client) and unable to connect any other drive.

3.) I followed your suggestions, but no success (even editing the vmx File did NOT help me)

4.) I started the VM again and clicked "Install VMWare Tools" again.

5.) Then I clicked on the Virtual CD Button (disconnect D:).

6.) And last but not least I clicked "End VMWare Tools Install".

Whoops - There it is. The Virtual CD Button is back and I can connect all of my drives...

Greetings from Germany

Alex

[wollila]

Hi,

i have got the same issue. Solved this thing with

"Install VMWare tools" (so cdrom-device will be occupied by VM-Server)

and then

"End VMWare tools install"

and i got a clean, functional cdrom.

greetings

Wolfgang

p.s: we are running esx host version 3.0.2, Build 52542

[Bill_Morton]

Well, I'll be. I was going to do some patching today, and a few VMs that were P2V'd would not migrate due to a cd-rom connected to "client-unknown". A few of them wouldnt even let me open the "edit settings".

Tried the install tools, end install trick and they are all resolved.

Edit: now that I think about it, this could be a big problem ... this issue prevents DRS from working, and might conflict with HA.Does anyone know if this is a VMware recognized issue / patched?

[R_Dissel]

Just wanted to confirm this is still a problem.

I P2V a couple of servers this weekend and they all had this problem (windows 2000 and 2003).

The problem was resolved with the start/end install Vmware tools.

[Gene_H]

It was still a problem for me. Tried all options above and the "Install" / "Cancel Install" of the vmtools finally corrected the problem?

This is wierd as I did a comlete vmtools install before the install/cancel and that did not correct the problem.

Gene

[zippy_thewonder]

I've also noticed this over the last few months. We follow a standard procedure to build Windows and Linux VM's, and every now and then this "Connected - client unknown" issue comes up, say 1 in every 15 newly created VM's. To get around this in the past I've had to fiddle with changing from ISO-based to host-based to datastore-based virtual CD-ROMS, and constantly shutting down and restarting the VM, which may take anything from 30 seconds to a couple of hours of fiddling!

Just tried Install Tools / End Install and has worked first time - awesome!

[littlejohn134]

Brilliant. Tried it install the tools last night but it failed. Then wanted to migrate this morning and ran into this problem.

Quick start and stop of the vm ware tools install did the job for me.

Thanks mate.

[romapi]

I had the same problem and connecting/disconnecting the vmware tools ISO did not help.

So I`ve found another way. A bit hardcore. Not sure about ESXi but it is definitely working on ESX with a full operational Service Console.

From a host that is currently running the VM :

[root@###### ]# vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/Datastore/VM/VM.vmx disconnectdevice "ide0:0"
disconnectdevice(ide0:0) = 1

Hope it's helpful.

Bregs, Roman