open-vm-tools-devel

vmtoolsd requiring running X server

[Michael W. <mi...@we...>]

Hello,

I'm facing a somewhat peculiar problem with open-vm-tools 2009.12.16 on
a minimalistic, current Debian testing. This same VM I use on hosts with
VMware Fusion 2.0.6 on Mac OS X 10.6.2 and VMware Workstation 6.5.1 on
SuSE 10.1 and 11.1. It behaves the same everywhere.

Upon suspend of the VM, VMware complains, that I'm not running VMware
Tools. Also, time synchronisation with the host isn't working. After
some debugging I found, that Debian starts vmtoolsd on boot but later
there's no process vmtoolsd running. There're no log entries and no
other messages.

When executing vmtoolsd with the --log option I get the message

[ warning] [Gtk] cannot open display:

When run from inside an X11 session, it starts okay. So it seems,
vmtoolsd requires a running X server to function. Is that the case? Is
it meant to be that way or a bug? Can I, for the time being, work around
the problem?

As far as I can gather, vmtoolsd needs to run as root. So starting it at
boot time makes sense. But since I don't start a graphical display
manager, there'll be no X, yet, and vmtoolsd will bail straight away.
Even if I could start vmtoolsd as root automatically when I later login
in as normal user and start an X server, time synchronisation and
suspend scripts would not work until then.

I also want the X11 screen resizing function to continue working, when I
decide to start X. Right now it does, since vmware-user seems to be
enough for that. But from the ChangeLog I gather that all functions of
vmware-guestd and vmware-user are meant to migrate to vmtoolsd. So
compiling vmtoolsd without X11 support or removing the X11 plugins will
break that function eventually.
-- 
Thanks in advance,
Micha

Re: vmtoolsd requiring running X server

[Eric S. <ej...@sh...>]

Michael Weiser wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm facing a somewhat peculiar problem with open-vm-tools 2009.12.16 on
> a minimalistic, current Debian testing. This same VM I use on hosts with
> VMware Fusion 2.0.6 on Mac OS X 10.6.2 and VMware Workstation 6.5.1 on
> SuSE 10.1 and 11.1. It behaves the same everywhere.
> 
> Upon suspend of the VM, VMware complains, that I'm not running VMware
> Tools. Also, time synchronisation with the host isn't working. After
> some debugging I found, that Debian starts vmtoolsd on boot but later
> there's no process vmtoolsd running. There're no log entries and no
> other messages.
> 
> When executing vmtoolsd with the --log option I get the message
> 
> [ warning] [Gtk] cannot open display:
> 
> When run from inside an X11 session, it starts okay. So it seems,
> vmtoolsd requires a running X server to function. Is that the case? Is
> it meant to be that way or a bug? Can I, for the time being, work around
> the problem?
> 
> As far as I can gather, vmtoolsd needs to run as root. So starting it at
> boot time makes sense. But since I don't start a graphical display
> manager, there'll be no X, yet, and vmtoolsd will bail straight away.
> Even if I could start vmtoolsd as root automatically when I later login
> in as normal user and start an X server, time synchronisation and
> suspend scripts would not work until then.
> 
> I also want the X11 screen resizing function to continue working, when I
> decide to start X. Right now it does, since vmware-user seems to be
> enough for that. But from the ChangeLog I gather that all functions of
> vmware-guestd and vmware-user are meant to migrate to vmtoolsd. So
> compiling vmtoolsd without X11 support or removing the X11 plugins will
> break that function eventually.

This brings up a concern of mine that I hope to address soon. I run 
several virtual servers, and would like some of the vmtools 
functionality, namely timekeeping and the vmxnet device driver. Needless 
to say, there is no X11 on any of these machines.

My question is, is there a way to install just the pieces I need? I 
certainly won't be installing X11 on any of these guests.

-- 
-Eric 'shubes'

Re: vmtoolsd requiring running X server

[Dmitry T. <dt...@vm...>]

Hi Eric,

On Wednesday 20 January 2010 05:37:06 am Eric Shubert wrote:
> 
> This brings up a concern of mine that I hope to address soon. I run
> several virtual servers, and would like some of the vmtools
> functionality, namely timekeeping and the vmxnet device driver. Needless
> to say, there is no X11 on any of these machines.
> 
> My question is, is there a way to install just the pieces I need? I
> certainly won't be installing X11 on any of these guests.
> 

You can run configure script with "--without-x", that should leave vmware-user 
components out.

Hope this helps.

-- 
Dmitry

Re: vmtoolsd requiring running X server

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

On 01/20/2010 04:47 AM, Michael Weiser wrote:
> When executing vmtoolsd with the --log option I get the message
> 
> [ warning] [Gtk] cannot open display:

That's definitely not expected. vmtoolsd nor its dependent libraries need X. It
might be a problem with Debian's packaging. To be sure, I'd need:

. list of plugins under $datadir/open-vm-tools/plugins/vmsvc
. output of "ldd vmtoolsd"
. output of "ldd libvmtools.so"

I'm pretty sure the vmtoolsd / libvmtools code don't ever call GTK functions,
but some of the plugins do (and these shouldn't be deployed in the "vmsvc"
container).

-- 
- Marcelo

Re: vmtoolsd requiring running X server

[Michael W. <mi...@we...>]

Hello Marcelo,

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 09:43:03AM -0800, Marcelo Vanzin wrote:

> > When executing vmtoolsd with the --log option I get the message
> > 
> > [ warning] [Gtk] cannot open display:

> That's definitely not expected. vmtoolsd nor its dependent libraries need X. It
> might be a problem with Debian's packaging. To be sure, I'd need:

> . list of plugins under $datadir/open-vm-tools/plugins/vmsvc

michael@eglarest-debian:~$ ls -la /usr/lib/open-vm-tools/plugins/
total 284
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  4096 2010-01-18 18:21 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root  4096 2010-01-18 18:21 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 38148 2009-12-20 13:41 libguestInfo.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 60040 2009-12-20 13:41 libhgfsServer.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  8676 2009-12-20 13:41 libpowerOps.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12888 2009-12-20 13:41 libresolutionSet.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10940 2009-12-20 13:41 libtimeSync.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 62700 2009-12-20 13:41 libvix.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 45952 2009-12-20 13:41 libvixUser.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14788 2009-12-20 13:41 libvmbackup.so

I think, I finally understand: libvixUser.so and libresolutionSet.so
should be in vmusr and the rest in vmsvc. But in the Debian package
they're all together in the plugins directory, although the vmusr
plugins are installed with a separate package open-vm-toolbox.

I'll take it up with the Debian guys!
-- 
Thanks a lot!
Micha