[patch] Workstation 11 vmware-hostd crashes on unrecognized Linux distribution

[emmdeeell]

When running a VM as a shared VM on Workstation 11, vmware-hostd crashes repeatedly if vmtoolsd is running in the guest and the distribution isn't recognized by vmware-hostd. This causes all shared VMs to disappear from the GUI, though they will continue to run if they are already running. Stopping vmtoolsd and restarting the shared VM service makes the VMs reappear, but if you restart vmtoolsd, the service will crash again. This happens for me with Arch Linux 64-bit and vmtoolsd from open-vm-tools; probably it is an issue on many other distributions too. Here is the relevant line from the hostd log file:

2015-01-06T16:52:51.141+09:00 [07580 error 'Default' opID=17217a18] Unable to convert Vigor value 'Arch-64' of type 'char const *' to VIM type 'enum Vim::Vm::GuestOsDescriptor::GuestOsIdentifier'

Attached is a patch for open-vm-tools-9.4.6-1770165.tar.gz which works around the issue. I can't find a repo or a place to send bug reports for open-vm-tools, though it seems to me like the bug is in Workstation anyway.

[enutra]

I am having this problem with a modified package created from open-vm-tools. Unfortunately I don't have the source to patch. Can you think of any work around that might help me out? Anything I can modify on the guest system to prevent the error that is killing hostd?

[enutra]

Actually, I was able to figure this out. My guest didn't have lsb_release so I created a script (/usr/bin/lsb_release) which output the OS version surrounded by quotes. That seemed to have done the trick.

[emmdeeell]

@enutra, sorry I didn't see your reply until just now, but glad you found a workaround.

I made an issue for this on the open-vm-tools repo. There's a newer patch (for open-vm-tools 9.10.2) there if anyone needs it.

[iremembercpm]

FYI, this bug has made it into ESXi (if the but was originally in Workstation).   We're seeing this from a CentOS 6 x64 VM running on VMware ESXi, 6.0.0, 4600944 running on a Dell R620.

esxi-10.company.local Hostd: error hostd[3AFA1A70] [Originator@6876 sub=Default opID=122a7d79] Unable to convert Vigor value 'centos6-64' of type 'char const*' to VIM type 'Vim::Vm::GuestOsDescriptor::GuestOsIdentifier'

[willemdh]

Same problem here. This bug is flooding our logs...

error hostd[28880B70] [Originator@6876 sub=Default opID=ec443bb8] Unable to convert Vigor value 'centos6-64' of type 'char const*' to VIM type 'Vim::Vm::GuestOsDescriptor::GuestOsIdentifier'

[nidla5]

did you solve this issue? I am having the same issue...

Is the bug solved in some newer version of ESXi or vmware tools?

thank you in advance

[priscillagr]

Hello,

I'm having the same problem! I'm really worried because i have a lot of centos6/7 in my enviroment and my hostd.log is going crazy ( hopefully it won`t crash vmware-hostd).

Does VMware has a said on this? Or anyone tried something to make de logs go away?

[A13x]

Having the same issue here and have been for a few months now. SR logged under 17532308908 and 17591592810. The first one was auto closed and the second one i have open which is looking like it might change into a PR which takes 6 months!!!

This was reported as an issue to OVT back in oct.

vmware-hostd crashes on unrecognized Linux distribution · Issue #31 · vmware/open-vm-tools · GitHub

[flynmooney]

Seeing the same thing with both Centos 6 and 7 with ESXi 6.0 5572656.  VMs are running the OpenTools.

2017-11-30T17:23:23.182Z xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Hostd: error hostd[7AE85B70] [Originator@6876 sub=Default opID=29d98f92] Unable to convert Vigor value 'centos7-64' of type 'char const*' to VIM type 'Vim::Vm::GuestOsDescriptor::GuestOsIdentifier'

[A13x]

The issue i had was with centos, workstation was creating the vmx guest os record which was not compatible with that version of workstation. Alter OS with the hardware version are compatible. Fixing this manually in the vmx resolved this for me.