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Bug 1358108 - [ESXi][RHEL7.3]open-vm-tools requires perl but spec missing it in Requires section
Summary: [ESXi][RHEL7.3]open-vm-tools requires perl but spec missing it in Requires se...
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
Classification: Red Hat
Component: open-vm-tools
Version: 7.2
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
urgent
medium
Target Milestone: rc
: ---
Assignee: Cathy Avery
QA Contact: ldu
URL:
Whiteboard:
: 1420620 1539802 2035202 (view as bug list)
Depends On:
Blocks: 1401400 1594286
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2016-07-20 05:27 UTC by Pushpendra Chavan
Modified: 2022-01-04 20:11 UTC (History)
23 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2019-10-03 20:31:48 UTC
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Attachments (Terms of Use)


Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
Red Hat Knowledge Base (Solution) 2456451 0 None None None 2016-07-21 09:24:51 UTC

Description Pushpendra Chavan 2016-07-20 05:27:55 UTC 
Description of problem:

According to:

https://access.redhat.com/solutions/1449563

...the functionality of open-vm-tools-deploypkg (from VMware) was integrated into open-vm-tools (from Red Hat) starting with RHEL 7.2 and open-vm-tools-9.10.2-4.el7.

Deploypkg requires Perl for some of its functionality (VMware's own RPM was missing this "Requires"), but Red Hat's new open-vm-tools that includes deploypkg doesn't require Perl (it actually requires, but spec doesn't mention it in requires:)

Please add "Requires: perl" to open-vm-tools.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
open-vm-tools-9.10.2-4.el7.x86_64

How reproducible:
Always.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Without Perl the VMware Guest OS Customizations do not work at all (network configuration not set / updated and custom scripts are not run), which is quite a bit of the intended functionality.


Actual results:
perl doesn't get installed which is required for some of open-vm-tools functionality

Expected results:
This should install perl as a dependency.

Additional info:
Adding VMWare Group to this bz so that we can get there feedbacks as well.
Comment 2 Richard W.M. Jones 2016-07-20 09:31:20 UTC 
Seems like a legitimate request.

Ravindra: Is it OK to add the Perl dependency?  If we add a hard
'Requires: perl' on the base package, that will mean open-vm-tools
will be much harder to include in minimal Fedora & RHEL installs
(since they tend to dislike including Perl).  The only way to
work around that is to move deploypkg to a separate subpackage.
Comment 3 Ravindra Kumar 2016-07-21 02:03:27 UTC 
(In reply to Richard W.M. Jones from comment #2)
> Seems like a legitimate request.
> 
> Ravindra: Is it OK to add the Perl dependency?

Rich, I will discuss this within our group and get back. Is documenting this in your knowledge base or release notes an option here?
Comment 4 Pushpendra Chavan 2016-07-21 09:16:48 UTC 
(In reply to Ravindra Kumar from comment #3)

> 
> Rich, I will discuss this within our group and get back. Is documenting this
> in your knowledge base or release notes an option here?

I can create a KCS base _for quick remedy_ but fixing this problem out will be the requested solution. I will attach the published KCS to this bz shortly. Adding this into Actual Documentation will take time, because that follows the same BZ workflow.

- Pushpendra
Comment 5 Pushpendra Chavan 2016-07-21 09:26:28 UTC 
See this.

Why are some of the VMware Guest OS Customizations not working even after installing open-vm-tools ? 
https://access.redhat.com/solutions/2456451

This is still in unverified state. Once I get confirmation from VMWare as well that it's really required, we can mark it Verified.

Again, the fix will be better, or an official statement from both Vendors on this.

Thanks,
Pushpendra
Comment 6 Ravindra Kumar 2016-08-05 03:35:39 UTC 
Thanks Pushpendra. This needs to be documented.

Please document it for now and we will work on removing the dependency in future.
Comment 12 Richard W.M. Jones 2017-02-09 10:28:56 UTC 
*** Bug 1420620 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 18 John Savanyo 2017-06-27 21:34:18 UTC 
This issues is related to Bug 1418930 which is a request to increase package granularity of open-vm-tools. If there was more package granularity, then the perl dependency could be handled better since only one plug-in requires perl.
Comment 19 Richard W.M. Jones 2018-01-29 17:08:13 UTC 
*** Bug 1539802 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 20 Richard W.M. Jones 2018-01-29 17:09:28 UTC 
Note I have made this bug public now because a duplicate was reported
by a member of the public who couldn't see this one.
Comment 21 Cathy Avery 2018-07-05 18:05:56 UTC 
I'm assigning this bug to myself. Ravindra please continue to work this issue.
Comment 30 John Savanyo 2019-09-25 20:48:28 UTC 
We discussed the following on call this morning - The perl dependency comes from the deploypkg plug-in. There are three use cases for this plugin. First is to clone a template and customize guest on initial boot using vSphere’s customization feature. Second is to re-customize by SRM after a failover. Third is to re-customize the clone of a running VM using the instant clone feature.  In addition, if customer is using cloud-init to do customization, then there is a dependency on python  If they are using legacy customization method, then there is a dependency on perl.  Not all customers use the above features, so it is undesirable to force all users of OVT to install perl. Many security sensitive customer would not want to have perl installed. We don’t see a good solution to this. Would like to close this as Won’t Fix.
Comment 31 Bishop Clark 2019-09-25 23:07:24 UTC 
I read from the comment above that three of three use cases require perl.  If that's true, then adding a requirement seems very simple:

%package deploypkg
requires: perl
:

If we want to avoid perl, that's an easy enough sell -- not for any deficiencies, but to avoid the dearth of one-off tool installs where it can be avoided.  Switching to something like sed may be simpler, as it's usually installed; but that would take some coordination with the organization and team who built deploypkg to finish the job.
Comment 32 Rick Barry 2019-10-03 20:31:48 UTC 
Based on VMware's rationale in comment 30, closing this as WONTFIX for this version of open-vm-tools.
The preference is to avoid having all customers install perl for only a few use cases that are used by some customers.

If you have a strong objection, please re-open.
Comment 33 Cathy Avery 2022-01-04 19:03:35 UTC 
*** Bug 2035202 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 34 Bishop Clark 2022-01-04 20:11:29 UTC 
VMware's issue in comment 30 was interesting because this issue is only exposed in cases where the integrator wants to use the tool but hasn't automatically installed perl.  It's ironic that their objection to shoveling dependencies to fix the tool is an objection to a situation only seen when people are trying to avoid dependency-shoveling according to the very same ideals.

Comment 31 is an effort to address those concerns and still solve the simple dependency problem.

In that context, we chose to just close the ticket in comment 32.  Was closing it the best choice, when 2.5 years later the issue is still seen for people who haven't shoveled perl into their project already?

Can we consider re-opening this ticket for a one-liner fix?
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