Bug 1328556

Hi Troy, a bit of history on this.

The vgauth daemon is disabled in RHEL 7.2 packages (for no apparent reason, as I don't have access to all private Red Hat bugs) and will be re-enabled in RHEL 7.3 [1].

I've commented the lines and build requirements which enabled the daemon during the last build to mimick RHEL 7 [2], but considering that now they are re-enabling it, it might be worth investing some time in making it work.

I've created a new build for RHEL 6 that includes the daemon [3]. Can you please test it and make sure that the daemon starts and stop properly? I'm not sure I will be able to get access to our VMWare installation tomorrow.

[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1172833
[2] http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/open-vm-tools.git/commit/?h=el6&id=73402a5f5964505d232115393b4b340be0491152
[3] http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=756375

Thanks,
--Simone

Hi Simone,

The basic litmus test passes for the RPM itself, but the script has an error. Using the same VM as this was reported on:

# /etc/init.d/vmtoolsd stop
# yum remove open-vm-tools libmspack libdnet
# curl -O https://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org//packages/open-vm-tools/9.10.2/2.el6/x86_64/open-vm-tools-9.10.2-2.el6.x86_64.rpm
# yum localinstall open-vm-tools-9.10.2-2.el6.x86_64.rpm

...good to go, no RPM errors. I can then start vmtoolsd:

[root@726846-cent6 ~]# /etc/init.d/vmtoolsd start
Starting vmtoolsd:                                         [  OK  ]


However, vgauthd has a bash test error:

[root@726846-cent6 ~]# /etc/init.d/vgauthd start
/etc/init.d/vgauthd: line 24: [: /etc/sysconfig/VGAuthService: binary operator expected
/etc/init.d/vgauthd: line 29: [: /usr/bin/VGAuthService: binary operator expected


Running it under a quick bash -x and chopping out the useless bits of output:

[root@726846-cent6 ~]# bash -x /etc/init.d/vgauthd start
+ . /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
...
+ exec='/usr/bin/VGAuthService -b'
+ prog='VGAuthService -b'
+ '[' -e /etc/sysconfig/VGAuthService -b ']'
/etc/init.d/vgauthd: line 24: [: /etc/sysconfig/VGAuthService: binary operator expected
+ lockfile='/var/lock/subsys/VGAuthService -b'
+ case "$1" in
+ rh_status_q
+ rh_status
+ start
+ '[' -x /usr/bin/VGAuthService -b ']'
/etc/init.d/vgauthd: line 29: [: /usr/bin/VGAuthService: binary operator expected
+ exit 5


So you see the obvious problem:

exec="/usr/bin/VGAuthService -b"
...
start() {
    [ -x $exec ] || exit 5


The script needs to separate the executable from the options into two variables for that test to succeed, etc. (couple of ways to solve it, dealer's choice). I have this VM reserved for testing this bug, happy to help continue testing just holler.

Hi Troy, sorry for the confusion, but VGAuth can not be enabled on EPEL 6, I opened a bug in August 2015 [1] for it. So much time has passed and VMWare does not care at all about bugs, so I completely forgot. What I had to do in this case, was to simply comment the line creating the problem.

I will see if with an update to open-vm-tools 10.0.0 is feasible.

I've done another build with VGAuth completely disabled [2], it works for me on VMWare Workstation.

[1] https://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools/issues/37
[2] http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/taskinfo?taskID=13743698

(In reply to Simone Caronni from comment #1)
> Hi Troy, a bit of history on this.
> 
> The vgauth daemon is disabled in RHEL 7.2 packages (for no apparent reason,
> as I don't have access to all private Red Hat bugs) and will be re-enabled
> in RHEL 7.3 [1].

vgauth support requires some gigantic C++ libraries to be added
to RHEL 7 which we were (and still are) unhappy about.

open-vm-tools-9.10.2-3.el6 has been submitted as an update to Fedora EPEL 6. https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-EPEL-2016-7b7756794e

(In reply to Richard W.M. Jones from comment #4)
> (In reply to Simone Caronni from comment #1)
> > The vgauth daemon is disabled in RHEL 7.2 packages (for no apparent reason,
> > as I don't have access to all private Red Hat bugs) and will be re-enabled
> > in RHEL 7.3 [1].
> 
> vgauth support requires some gigantic C++ libraries to be added
> to RHEL 7 which we were (and still are) unhappy about.

Ah, ok :)
Thanks.

Thanks Simone - smoke tests pass on the newest build, added +1 karma. Much appreciated!

open-vm-tools-9.10.2-3.el6 has been pushed to the Fedora EPEL 6 testing repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
See https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Updates_Testing for
instructions on how to install test updates.
You can provide feedback for this update here: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-EPEL-2016-7b7756794e

(In reply to Simone Caronni from comment #3)
> Hi Troy, sorry for the confusion, but VGAuth can not be enabled on EPEL 6, I
> opened a bug in August 2015 [1] for it. So much time has passed and VMWare
> does not care at all about bugs, so I completely forgot.

Sorry to hear that Simone. We do care about all bugs, supporting open-vm-tools for EPEL 6 is low on our priority. Is upgrading Xerces an option?

open-vm-tools-9.10.2-3.el6 has been pushed to the Fedora EPEL 6 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.