VMWare can't be run purely from the command line

techuser — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:17:20 +0000

Keywords:

VMControl error -16: Virtual machine requires user input to continue

If you see that when manipulating a VMWare machine, you'll need to connect the management console and click on the window VMWare will show you.

vmware-server-console or whatever you use.

I can't see that even a hard reset can get rid of this without starting the graphical interface. If there is a way to get a machine back from the command line only, I'd be thankful to hear of it.

vmware-cmd reset not working?

techuser — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 10:40:26 +0000

Keywords:

vmware

vmware server

If your VMWare client crashes and becomes none responsive regularly (e.g. you're running a Windows client), it's a good idea to have a script monitoring it and calling reset when it dies.

The first obstacle I encountered was when "vmware-cmd /mymachine.vmx reset" was run and I got the following:

VMControl error -8: Invalid operation for virtual machine's current state: Make sure the VMware Server Tools are running

This obscure error was because I didn't read the documentation. 'Reset' takes an argument, see [1]. By default, it will try to do a 'soft' reboot - i.e. it will only talk to vmware-tools inside the machine and try a clean reboot. If the machine is dead, that's not going to happen. The answer is to use 'hard' or 'trysoft'. I prefer trysoft. If a response is not found from vmware-tools, it tells VMWare to do a "hard" reset of the client.

Here's the bit of perl I'm using to monitor my VMWare machine:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Net::Ping;

# This is the host we check is up.
my $host = "192.168.16.54";

# Explict binding, not normally needed.
#my $local_addr = "192.168.16.23";

my $p = Net::Ping->new();
#$p->bind($local_addr);
if( !$p->ping($host) )
{
print "MachineX is down, forcing VMWare client reset...\n";
`/opt/vmware/server/bin/vmware-cmd "/var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines/client directory/client configuration.vmx" reset trysoft`
}

[1] http://www.vmware.com/support/esx2/doc/vmware-cmd.html#1012418

Technological Wanderings - vmware server

VMWare can't be run purely from the command line

vmware-cmd reset not working?