Guest OS customization using Terraform - fail on first boot

danilo-patrucco — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 15:44:48 GMT

Hello,

I am using Terraform to deploy a vm exported from AWS.

The process is the following:

- I use Packer to build an AMI in AWS

- The ami is then exported in vmdk format to VMware using terraform ( using a clone from an s3 bucket into a datastore )

- a template was previously created and using terraform the template is used to create a vm, the template does not have disks attached, the disk are attached when the vm is created.

When the vm is started it fails with the following error:

Customization of the guest operating system is not supported due to the given reason: Tools is not installed in the GuestOS. Please install the latest version of open-vm-tools or VMware Tools to enable GuestCustomization.

If I delete the VM (not remove the disk, using the Remove from inventory command) and rerun the terraform apply command it boot the vm and it is able to customize without any problem.

resource "vsphere_virtual_machine" "vm" { name = "test_machine_vm_01" resource_pool_id = data.vsphere_compute_cluster.cluster.resource_pool_id datastore_id = data.vsphere_datastore.datastore.id folder = "test" num_cpus = data.vsphere_virtual_machine.template.num_cpus memory = data.vsphere_virtual_machine.template.memory guest_id = "rhel7_64Guest" scsi_type = data.vsphere_virtual_machine.template.scsi_type tools_upgrade_policy = "upgradeAtPowerCycle" run_tools_scripts_after_power_on = true run_tools_scripts_after_resume = true run_tools_scripts_before_guest_shutdown = true run_tools_scripts_before_guest_standby = true network_interface { network_id = data.vsphere_network.network.id adapter_type = data.vsphere_virtual_machine.template.network_interface_types[0] } disk { attach = true path = var.VMDK_PATH_DISK_1 label = "disk.0" datastore_id = data.vsphere_datastore.datastore.id } disk { attach = true path = var.VMDK_PATH_DISK_2 label = "disk.1" datastore_id = data.vsphere_datastore.datastore.id unit_number = 1 } clone { template_uuid = data.vsphere_virtual_machine.template.id customize { linux_options { host_name = "rhel7-image" domain = "mipa.med.ds.osd.mil" } network_interface { ipv4_address = "myip" ipv4_netmask = 24 } ipv4_gateway = "mygateway" } } }

In my image created with packer I use the following commands as root before shutting it down

systemctl enable vmtoolsd systemctl start vmtoolsd systemctl status vmtoolsd

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you !

Re: Guest OS customization using Terraform - fail on first boot

danilo-patrucco — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 14:49:24 GMT

If anyone lands on this, The problem is that the machine is built in AWS, and vmtoolsd does not start at all when outside of VMware environment.

The solution is to build a packer image with the packer VMware library, or manually start the vm for the first time.

topic Guest OS customization using Terraform - fail on first boot in vSphere Management SDK Discussions

Guest OS customization using Terraform - fail on first boot

Re: Guest OS customization using Terraform - fail on first boot