Run Script in Guest VM - Hangs, Never Completes

[Tanner_R]

Hello Everyone,

I am having an issue with VRO and the 'Run Script in Guest' workflow. I am currently passing in a script (.cmd file) for the workflow to run and install an application.

I see that VRO has created the typical vmware## folder in C:\Windows\Temp and copied the script output there, as I expect. It is also launched a cmd.exe process, as I would expect.

However, this is where the workflow gets stuck. The cmd.exe process never ends, and the 'Run Script in Guest' workflow goes into an infitite loop of hitting the 'Improved Sleep' workflow, waiting for cmd.exe to exit.

I have no idea why this cmd.exe process won't end. This exact workflow has worked in the past, and to my knowledge, neither the script, application, or OS has been updated/patched/changed. We have other peices of software that are being installed in exactly the same way that do not have this issue.

Furthermore: I just tried using a powershell script (instead of .cmd) to install this application (IBM BigFix, in our case), and it runs the script successfully, but does not install the application. If I login through RDP and run the same exact script, it installs as expected...

Does anyone have any ideas as to what could be causing this?

[qc4vmware]

What version of vRO are you running.  I hit a nasty bug a while back which surfaced for me while using the guest script manager.  It had something to do with the timer based activities in vRO when nested too deeply.  By any chance are you running multiple guest operations one after another?  Thats where it hit me it would run the first operation successfully but the second would always error out.  I believe the bug first surfaced in 7.2 or 7.3 but should be fixed in 7.3.1 and beyond.

[Tanner_R]

Hi qc4vmware​, we are running vRO 7.1.0.4262825. That does sound like a nasty bug. Yes, we are running several guest operations, one right after the other (the issue we have also appears to be on the 2nd operation as well).

I have narrowed it down to being some type of VRA or VRO issue for sure. After working on it all day yesterday, and not being able to get it working, a coworker ran a build through the workflow this morning, and it worked 100% fine. 3-4 more VMs have been deployed since then, and they have all worked without issue as well. This problem is not reproducable in a consistant manner, it seems.

So this is definitely helpful information. We may still try and open an SR on this issue to determine the exact problem. Do you happen to have a KB article/number for the problem you are refering to?

Thanks,

Tanner

[Sasidhar1234]

Hi Tanner,

Greetings!!!

We have implemented BigFIx and vRO in our environment. The requirement is post provisioning, patching should take place without rebooting the server.

Could you please help me how you are doing in your environment by giving vRO workflows you are implementing?

Thanks in advance!!!

Regards,

Sasidhar