Accepted Solutions
You're correct, its most likely the PATH is not properly set. I would recommend you run "env" when you're login as root or vi-admin and get the PATH variable and take that add that to /etc/crontab if you're trying to run it as vi-admin. One you get it working, you can figure out what paths you actually need but since you're running the vSphere SDK for Perl scripts, you want to make sure you capture all the paths that the script references.
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William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009,2010
VMware VCP3,4
VMware VCAP4-DCA
VMware scripts and resources at:
Getting Started with the vMA (tips/tricks)
Getting Started with the vSphere SDK for Perl
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
You're correct, its most likely the PATH is not properly set. I would recommend you run "env" when you're login as root or vi-admin and get the PATH variable and take that add that to /etc/crontab if you're trying to run it as vi-admin. One you get it working, you can figure out what paths you actually need but since you're running the vSphere SDK for Perl scripts, you want to make sure you capture all the paths that the script references.
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009,2010
VMware VCP3,4
VMware VCAP4-DCA
VMware scripts and resources at:
Getting Started with the vMA (tips/tricks)
Getting Started with the vSphere SDK for Perl
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
Wow, Mr. Lam himself replies. 
I'm running tons of your scripts in my lab. Thank you for all that you do - you've made my life much easier. If you're ever on the east coast, I owe you a beer and a large steak at a minimum.
Agreed, pathing is probably what's killing me. I did what you suggest - copied the results of 'env' into /etc/crontab, still no joy.
I decided I was reaching for the stars a little bit and started to carve back the script a ways to better define the problem. Here's what I found that was interesting...
In my original script, one of the early lines is
source /path/I/cant/remember/vifpinit myVCserver
I've replaced that line with (due to deprecation of vifpinit):
source /absolute/path/to/vifptarget -s myVCserver
I commented the rest of the script out - and I'm still getting the same error regarding compilation and so files. This tells me that what I had originally thought was a problem with the vmcontrol.pl<http://vmcontrol.pl> invocation is actually happening higher up in my script - I'm not able to initialize/set the vCenter as the active target from a cron job. I don't know if there's a better method of doing this, but it's the method I've always used and it has worked historically.
Again, the script works fine outside of the cron environment. In the environment, it fails, even when I manually force my environmental variables into the logic that cron is using. I acknowledge plainly that my Linux fu has big holes in it, so this could easily be a user-induced problem. But I'm dangerous enough (to myself and equipment, heh heh...) that I feel confident that I didn't do anything to create this issue. Literally, I deployed the 4.1 vMA, scp'd my scripts from the old vMA where they were functioning to the new vMA, and started working on shaking the bugs out (like vifpinit), and that's how I got here.
Thanks for your insight and help bud. I'm doing some homework on cron vs. perl, (saw some interesting things over there on the cpan boards that might be worthwhile pursuits), but I'm not sure if I'm at the right circus and watching the wrong clown. Reckon we'll see...
V/r,
- Abe Lister
I'm assuming you've seen this reply - ?
I'm still not exactly clear on the errors ... what I might recommend is to redirect the script execution to a tmp file in your cron entry so you can see the errors.
e.g.
01 * * * * root /home/vi-admin/somescript.pl >> /tmp/debug.log
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009,2010
VMware VCP3,4
VMware VCAP4-DCA
VMware scripts and resources at:
Getting Started with the vMA (tips/tricks)
Getting Started with the vSphere SDK for Perl
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
You're most likely missing the lib paths, since it's unable to locate the vi-fastpass libs
Try adding the PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH into your crontab entry
e.g.
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=:/opt/vmware/vma/lib64:/opt/vmware/vma/lib PATH=/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/java/jre-vmware/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/home/vi-admin/bin
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009,2010
VMware VCP3,4
VMware VCAP4-DCA
VMware scripts and resources at:
Getting Started with the vMA (tips/tricks)
Getting Started with the vSphere SDK for Perl
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".