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bheusmann
Contributor
Contributor

VCSA 6.5 at login screen

I rebooted my vCenter 6.5 Appliance from the vSphere Web Client. It rebooted and it's just sitting at the login screen. I've rebooted it a number of times and it usually automatically ends ups at the usual splash with the IP and other information. I can't access the web-client or the web management on port 5480. All the VM's are up and running. What services aren't running and is there a way for me to start them from the shell? Thanks.

-BH

8 Replies
srodenburg
Expert
Expert

I have the exact same problem. A new appliance, 2 days old, version 6.5.0d, has been working fine for the last 2 days. Did a reboot and after the Photon OS start-screen comes up, shows a login screen after only a couple of seconds and that's it. This login screen appeared within 5 seconds after power-on which is not normal.

Please don't go blabbering about filesystem issues, fcsk or any of that. This is something very different. It's like it's booting an alternative shell / OS and it's definitely not going through the normal start-up process (which I'm quite familiar with).

A unix / Linux person would say it does not go through normal INIT.

It does not even try to load any services. It never gets to that point (so please don't tell me to wait a couple of minutes for services to start up..).

It just sits there waiting with a login prompt. Login with root does not work (password invalid it says, which is clearly not the case).

Does anyone know what this is?

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srodenburg
Expert
Expert

I've found what caused my situation:  For some freak reason, while deploying the HA-Pair, the active appliance rebooted and came back thinking it’s the passive appliance but in reality, deploying the second appliance (which would become the passive appliance) did not finish yet. So there is no working second appliance (just a freshly cloned appliance, not configured at all yet so it's a useless vegetable)

As VMware has no off-the-shelf solution for this without going through the usual support-channel (which will take days if not weeks), I see no other option as to start over from scratch.

Our Windows vCenter 6 was broken beyond repair, so we decided to start fresh with an Appliance. I spent two days getting all ESXi servers in there, re-creating the entire permission model, the tons of VM Folders, moving the VM's into the correct folders and applying permissions etc. etc. etc.

2 days of work gone…

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Nic3GreenNachos
Contributor
Contributor

I have a similar issue with vCenter with embedded PSC in an appliance. On the release notes, VMware is aware of the issue it seems. If you check here, VMware vSphere 6.5.0d Release Notes​, go to 'Known Issues from Prior Releases,' click to view all, go down to 'Security Features Issues,' and go to 'vCenter Server services do not start after reboot or failover if Platform Services Controller node is unavailable,' the command, 'service-control --start --all,' gets my appliance working. There is also some good info here, Stopping, starting, or restarting VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.x services (2109887) | VMware KB.

I SSHed into the appliance and added a script to '/etc/init.d/' to just run the command on startup.

Commands to do that are,

echo '#!/bin/bash

service-control --start --all

done' > /etc/init.d/Startup.sh

chmod +x /etc/init.d/Startup.sh

However, it doesn't get the appliance to show the console for network configuration and such. I am going to look further for a solution to that. Maybe there is another command I can add to the script that will get that part of the server appliance running. I think I will be checking the logs to see what fails on startup.

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VMlandlord
Contributor
Contributor

I had a similar problem and what I did to fix it was:

Tried first

service-control --start --all

Upon doing that it complained that sps was not started and that vmon also had an issue so next:

service-control --start sps

Waited a few minutes

Then tried

service-control --start --all

That fixed it at least in my case.

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BlackRamIT
Contributor
Contributor

I've been working with VCSA V6.5U1 for about a week in my home lab.  It seems the PSC hangs if it doesn't have a DC to communicate with to support SSO.  What I have been doing is bringing up my ESXi Host without the VCSA in auto-start, getting the DC going and then starting the VCSA.

Works in my Lab.  If you are in production, make sure you have a Physical DC on your network and it is available.  Best practices anyway!

BlackRam

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Yvory
Contributor
Contributor

I had the same problem today.

I couldn't reach the web client after reboot and was only shown the login screen.

Took a coffee break and after 15min the web client was running, but still no splash screen.

After some time I remembered, that you can switch consoles in VCSA.

Finally reached the splash screen with Ctrl+Alt+F2.

-Yvory

admin
Immortal
Immortal

If you have those inputs (or screenshots), please do post them.

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Santhiago
Contributor
Contributor

Man was it exacly what I need. You saved my time!

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