LucD, I also get this error when my interfaces are not all named ethX, or when the script Script/GetVMGuestNetworkInterface (you'll find it in the PowerCLI installation directory) can't open the files /etc/sysconf/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethX. Try copying this script to a VM, it is a simple Perl script that parses the output from ifconfig, route, and the ifcfg-ethX files. Of course, if your "old" RHEL4 VM don't use the ifcfg-ethX scripts for configuration, or if the output format from route or ifconfig has been modified between that and RHEL5, you will need to write an equivalent script.
Also, since I couldn't track our support contract yet, in the meantime I'll dump here the bug report, if a VMware technicians happens to pass here.
When using the Set-VMGuestNetworkInterface against a RHEL 5.4 guest running on ESX4, the wrong network interface is configured. The guest has two network interfaces, eth0 and eth1 (and lo, the loopback interface). For logging purpose, I added at the end of the file "C:/Program Files/VMware/Infrastructure/vSphere PowerCLI/Scripts/SetVMGuestNetworkInterface_LinuxGuest" the following:
open(LOGFILE, ">>", "/var/log/setNIC");
print LOGFILE "@ARGV", "\n";
close(LOGFILE);
The following transcript shows the problem:
[vSphere PowerCLI] H:\> $rh = (get-VM)[3]
[vSphere PowerCLI] H:\> $rh.Guest.GuestId
rhel5Guest
[vSphere PowerCLI] H:\> $eth1 = Get-VMGuestNetworkInterface -VM $rh |? { $_.Name -eq "eth1" }
[vSphere PowerCLI] H:\> $eth1
VMId : VirtualMachine-672
SubnetMask : 255.255.255.128
NicId : VirtualMachine-672/4001
Name : eth1
IPPolicy : Static
Ip : 172.25.126.16
Dns : {139.54.40.6, 135.120.0.246}
DefaultGateway :
Description : Ethernet
Mac : 00:0C:29:0A:40:6D
RouteInterfaceId : eth1
DnsPolicy : Dhcp
WinsPolicy :
Wins :
[vSphere PowerCLI] H:\> Set-VMGuestNetworkInterface -VmGuestNetworkInterface $eth1 -Ip 1.2.3.4
VMId : VirtualMachine-672
SubnetMask : 255.255.255.192
NicId : VirtualMachine-672/4000
Name : eth0
IPPolicy : Static
Ip : 1.2.3.4
Dns : {139.54.40.6, 135.120.0.246}
DefaultGateway : 172.25.205.254
Description : Ethernet
Mac : 00:0C:29:0A:40:63
RouteInterfaceId : eth0
DnsPolicy : Dhcp
WinsPolicy :
Wins :
[vSphere PowerCLI] H:\> Get-VMGuestNetworkInterface -VM $rh
VMId : VirtualMachine-672
SubnetMask : 255.255.255.192
NicId : VirtualMachine-672/4000
Name : eth0
IPPolicy : Static
Ip : 1.2.3.4
Dns : {139.54.40.6, 135.120.0.246}
DefaultGateway : 172.25.205.254
Description : Ethernet
Mac : 00:0C:29:0A:40:63
RouteInterfaceId : eth0
DnsPolicy : Dhcp
WinsPolicy :
Wins :
VMId : VirtualMachine-672
SubnetMask : 255.255.255.128
NicId : VirtualMachine-672/4001
Name : eth1
IPPolicy : Static
Ip : 172.25.126.16
Dns : {139.54.40.6, 135.120.0.246}
DefaultGateway :
Description : Ethernet
Mac : 00:0C:29:0A:40:6D
RouteInterfaceId : eth1
DnsPolicy : Dhcp
WinsPolicy :
Wins :
VMId : VirtualMachine-672
SubnetMask : 255.0.0.0
NicId :
Name : lo
IPPolicy : Static
Ip : 127.0.0.1
Dns : {139.54.40.6, 135.120.0.246}
DefaultGateway :
Description : Local Loopback
Mac :
RouteInterfaceId : lo
DnsPolicy : Dhcp
WinsPolicy :
Wins :
[vSphere PowerCLI] H:\> (Get-VMHost|Get-View).Config.Product.Fullname
VMware ESX 4.0.0 build-175625
[vSphere PowerCLI] H:\> Get-VIToolkitVersion
PowerCLI Version
----------------
VMware vSphere PowerCLI 4.0 U1 build 208462 As the output shows, it is eth0 that is modified, and not eth1. This is confirmed by looking at the output from "ifconfig" inside the guest.
The content of /var/log/setNIC after running the previous transcript is:
eth0 static 1.2.3.4 (etc.)
This shows that the SetVMGuestNetworkInterface_LinuxGuest script is given the wrong interface name as a parameter.
