How to kill a process on esx host that keeps the vmdk and swap file open

[spham68]

All,

A virtual machine was not deleted in the virtualcenter. Someone delete all the files in the vm directory while it is being powered. Now it becomes orphaned and can not delete the vmdk and swap file because it is being opened.

How would I go about killing this process and sucessful delete vmdk and swap file in that directory? I did a command ps -auxwww |grep -i vvm and it is still showing up. The ESX host is part of a cluster if I failover the other host I would suspect

orphaned vm will also failover.

Running ESX 3.5 with update 1

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Steve

[vmmeup · Accepted solution]

Do a ps -ax | grep vmname.vmx use the actual filename to the vmx file. Find the PID id and do a kill -9 PID id Just so you know the -9 means kill the process without prejudice. If it still shows up in VC just remove it from inventory if VC barks at you then restart the VC service and try again.

[mike_laspina]

Hi,

Connect directly to the ESX host with the VI Client using the root user or any authed ID and power off the VM with a rclick on the VM object.

[spham68]

I was able to kill the process after looking at the PID ID.

Thanks,

Steve

[mike_laspina]

FYI,

You could also use the list open files command to find the offending process in the future.

lsof | grep filename