Solved: vCenter 5.5 | Disaster, lost database trying to up...

codypetry · ‎09-30-2013

There was a bug in vCenter 5.5 (go figure) where it was trying to access a file in "C:\users" for some odd reason and it refused to install/configure SSO correctly. It took VMWare support hours to force it to install by copying files around by hand trying to get the installer to recognize the file it needed at "C\users."

Now, I have vCenter 5.5, with a new database and the web client service isn't configured correctly. At the page where it asks to run as a local system account or as a domain account I specified a domain account. Well the domain isn't the server name so I punched in the domain.local FQDN instead of the FQDN of the server. Now when I visit the web client service URL it says it can't connect to vCenter as it's trying to access domain.local not server.domain.local.

VMWare support is telling me I have to UNINSTALL vCenter and reinstall to fix it. This is ludicrous. They are trying to tell me there is no other way to edit this setting. Are you kidding me?

Any thoughts from the community? VMWare help has been very helpless over this entire situation.

Thanks,

Cody

codypetry · ‎10-01-2013

It turns out this error during install was created by having a ! in my username. Support said they will include a fix for this in an upcoming release. They also told me the errors generated during install could be ignored. Everything does appear to be working regardless of those errors being generated during the install process (simple install).

View solution in original post

abhilashhb · ‎09-30-2013

If you did a simple install you will have to reinstall the whole thing. If it was a individual component installation it again has to be redone coz all the components depend on each other. If you reinstall SSO then you will have to install inventory service again. I'm sure there is a fix for your issue but do reinstall it so that you will not face more issues later. The best thing to do is to do a fresh and proper installation. If you fix things like this then you might end up with more trouble later. I have done these kinds of things and have ended up with more trouble. When VMware guys tell you to reinstall they mean it coz they know you will get back to them with other issues.

Thats my opinion. You could wait for someone to suggest a workaround if you don't go with my suggestion.

Good luck.

Abhilash B
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhilashhb/

codypetry · ‎09-30-2013

Well it looks like I'm just going to rebuild the system from scratch again. I don't like how the support engineer butchered the NTFS permissions on the C:\users directory trying to fix the install when it had nothing to do with the NTFS perms on that directory. It was an access denied error but in reality it was a "I can't find the file" error.

I'm going to go with Windows Server 2012 this time and hope that these bugs don't appear in this version of Windows. I'm hoping that they developed 5.5 on 2012 and didn't really test it on 2008, which is what it seems like so far. I mean it broke out of the box. They don't seem to test anything at VMWare.

abhilashhb · ‎09-30-2013

Are you using the bundled SQL? I remember the only time the NTFS permissions matter is when SSO is trying to create a folder and dropping the table indexes into it.

Abhilash B
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhilashhb/

codypetry · ‎09-30-2013

No, this is SQL 2008 on a database server.

The error I'm referring to was only reported by two people.. me being the first. The inventory and web client install reported not being able to find a specific file during install. The installer was trying to locate the file in C:\users. That's obviously a bug. There's nothing directly in the C:\users directory that the installer should be trying to read.

After I installed SSO and went on to install the inventory service and web client service this error is generated:

[2013-09-27 17:15:48,231 main ERROR com.vmware.identity.token.impl.SamlTokenImpl] Schema resource `vmware-ws-trust-1.3.xsd' is missing.

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: C:\Users (Access is denied)

at com.vmware.identity.token.impl.Util.loadXmlSchemaFromResource(Util.java:170)

at com.vmware.vim.sso.client.impl.processors.response.ResponseHandlerImpl.loadWsTrustSchema(ResponseHandlerImpl.java:115)

at com.vmware.vim.sso.client.impl.processors.response.ResponseHandlerImpl.<clinit>(ResponseHandlerImpl.java:45)

at com.vmware.vim.sso.client.impl.processors.response.DefaultResponseHandlerFactory.getAcquireTokenByUserPassResponseHandler(DefaultResponseHandlerFactory.java:52)

at com.vmware.vim.sso.client.impl.SecurityTokenServiceImpl.acquireToken(SecurityTokenServiceImpl.java:123)

at com.vmware.vim.install.impl.AdminServiceAccess.acquireSamlToken(AdminServiceAccess.java:297)

at com.vmware.vim.install.impl.AdminServiceAccess.<init>(AdminServiceAccess.java:187)

at com.vmware.vim.install.impl.AdminServiceAccess.createDiscover(AdminServiceAccess.java:238)

at com.vmware.vim.install.impl.RegistrationProviderImpl.<init>(RegistrationProviderImpl.java:57)

at com.vmware.vim.install.RegistrationProviderFactory.getRegistrationProvider(RegistrationProviderFactory.java:143)

at com.vmware.vim.install.RegistrationProviderFactory.getRegistrationProvider(RegistrationProviderFactory.java:60)

at com.vmware.vim.install.cli.commands.CommandArgumentsParser.createServiceProvider(CommandArgumentsParser.java:241)

at com.vmware.vim.install.cli.commands.CommandArgumentsParser.parseCommand(CommandArgumentsParser.java:101)

at com.vmware.vim.install.cli.commands.CommandFactory.createValidateSsoCommand(CommandFactory.java:98)

at com.vmware.vim.install.cli.RegTool.process(RegTool.java:103)

at com.vmware.vim.install.cli.RegTool.main(RegTool.java:38)

Caused by: java.io.FileNotFoundException: C:\Users (Access is denied)

at java.util.zip.ZipFile.open(Native Method)

at java.util.zip.ZipFile.<init>(Unknown Source)

at com.vmware.identity.token.impl.Util$ClassResourceProvider.<init>(Util.java:300)

at com.vmware.identity.token.impl.Util.loadXmlSchemaFromResource(Util.java:158)

... 15 more

[2013-09-27 17:15:48,233 main ERROR com.vmware.vim.install.cli.RegTool] Unhandled exception tries to escape: null

[2013-09-27 17:15:48,233 main DEBUG com.vmware.vim.install.cli.RegTool]

java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError