Re: cloning and pre-freeze script question

[Marcelo V. <mv...@vm...>]

On 02/08/2011 11:33 AM, Jim wrote:
> I am using open-vm-tools 8.4.2 stable release but my linux other 2.6.x guest
> will not clone due to failure of a reported pre-freeze script returning
> non zero.
> Similar error to report in Tracker-3107225.

First, a disclaimer: the 8.4.2 release is a stable release, but was only tested
with Workstation and Fusion; so not all features that are used by ESX (such as
quiescing) are necessarily stable in that release.

I know, this is kinda non-optimal, but it's something we're trying to fix
internally, and when we get there it will trickle down to open-vm-tools naturally.

With that out of the way...

For ESX releases up to 4.1, quiescing for non-Windows VMs is quite simple; it
just tries to run a script in the guest (the "freeze" script, normally
/usr/sbin/pre-freeze-script), and after the snapshot is taken, tries to run
another script (the "thaw" script, normally /usr/sbin/post-thaw-script).

On Linux, if the vmsync driver is loaded, it will try to use it; but since that
driver hasn't really received that much testing (despite its age...), if you
have it loaded I'd recommend you unload it.

Since that code hasn't really changed in a while, I believe it should work. So I
suggest you check the two paths mentioned above, make sure they exist and are
executable, and are not returning a non-zero value.

If that doesn't help, I'd need logs from your VM to know exactly what's going on
when you try to clone (which creates a quiesced snapshot as part of cloning).
Let me know if you need instructions on how to set up logging.

-- 
- Marcelo