Tag: vmware

“Unknown job” errors when installing vmware tools in Ubuntu

Recently I’ve tried to install new vmware tools in Ubuntu 14.04.1 after upgrading VMware Workstation to version 10, and the build process crashed with errors like Unknown job: vmware-tools or Unknown job: vmware-tools-thinprint

After some debugging, I’ve found out that the problem was due to the fact that I was running the build process using sudo -s -E command, which gave me administrator rights, but kept some environment variables that messed initscripts-related commands (service, status and other from upstart package), on which build process relies. The solution is to build vmware-tools under clean environment for root user. To do that, gain superuser rights with sudo su - command, and then build vmware-tools as usual.

The tip above applies to general “unknown job” problem with starting/restarting services, not only to the vmware-tools build process.

[VMWare] Device uses a controller that is not supported

Today I tried to deploy a Virtual Appliance from Bitnami on my ESXi server using ovftool:

ovftool.exe bitnami-xxx.vmx vi://192.168.0.100

But each time I had an error:

Device ‘VirtualDisk’ uses a controller that is not supported. This is a general limitation of the virtual machine’s virtual hardware version on the selected host.

What was funny, it was perfectly fine if I converted the virtual machine to OVA format and started it using… VirtualBox.

I googled a bit and found out that some people had that similar problems and what they did was to upgrade virtual hardware from version 4 to 7. It wasn’t a solution for me because I already had version 7 – so maybe the problem was that I had “too new” virtual hardware? I opened bitnami-xxx.vmx file with a text editor and there I had:

virtualHW.version = "4"

I changed it to “7” and voila – it worked!