vsphere rhel7 customization not supported?

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Jeffrey Bilbro

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Aug 2, 2016, 1:00:37 PM8/2/16
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I'm new to Terraform and trying to build out my first system on our internal VMware environment.  When trying to create a vsphere_virtual_machine from a template, I get the following error:

* vsphere_virtual_machine.jeff-terraform-test: Customization of the guest operating system 'rhel7_64Guest' is not supported in this configuration. Microsoft Vista (TM) and Linux guests with Logical Volume Manager are supported only for recent ESX host and VMware Tools versions. Refer to vCenter documentation for supported configurations.


According to the link from Terraform's website, RHEL7 is supported for customization.  Can anyone lend a hand on this?



Thanks!

-Jeff

Jeffrey Bilbro

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Aug 2, 2016, 5:26:07 PM8/2/16
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Of note - I have installed open-vm-tools on this and the latest version supposedly includes open-vm-tools-deploypkg so it doesn't need to be installed separately.  I confirmed that when I boot the image I'm trying to customize, it says vmware tools are running and are guest managed. 

Jeffrey Bilbro

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Aug 2, 2016, 6:10:55 PM8/2/16
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Another note - if I build the vmware image with the vmware-tools (which gives you a stern warning on RHEL/CentOS7 to use open-vm-tools instead), it works fine.  Anyone know why this is busted with open-vm-tools?  I do have perl installed, as I've seen others reference that as the problem.


On Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at 12:00:37 PM UTC-5, Jeffrey Bilbro wrote:

Joaquin Mendez

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Nov 14, 2016, 8:09:44 PM11/14/16
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did you found a solution for this ?

Joaquin Mendez

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Nov 14, 2016, 8:22:29 PM11/14/16
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i just set my guest os to redhat 6 and it worked


El martes, 2 de agosto de 2016, 11:00:37 (UTC-6), Jeffrey Bilbro escribió:

Thomas Michel

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Nov 15, 2016, 4:00:10 AM11/15/16
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Hi Joaquin,

I deploy CentOS7 VM with terraform on a daily basis, it works pretty fine.

Did you installed the open-vm-tools package in your CentOS7 template?
This package replace the old vmware tools and enable Template Customization. Without it even
a template customization from vSphere would not work.

Regards

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joaquin mendez

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Nov 15, 2016, 7:25:09 AM11/15/16
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Open vm tools didn't work for me, the combination that worked was VMware-tools 9.6 from VMware fusion and set the guuest_os to red hat enterprise 6.

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Jeffrey Bilbro

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Nov 15, 2016, 9:21:04 AM11/15/16
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It took me some trial and error but I did get RHEL7/CentOS7 customizing just fine.  Had to get the proper packages installed - perl being the one that was tripping up the customization.  The other thing I've run into is that when I create a fresh image with Packer, Terraform fails to customize it until I power on the image one time and power it back off.  That, or convert it to an actual template.

Thomas Michel

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Nov 15, 2016, 9:32:35 AM11/15/16
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Yep, 

Once you got perl and the open-vm-tools installed, you must reboot your VM once before turning it to a template.
This allow the VM to load the correct module in the kernel.

Plus there is a compatibility matrix on the vmware site that shows if customization for VM OS/vSphere+ESX version

Good luck have fun 
Thomas
 

Florian Apolloner

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Sep 21, 2018, 9:56:07 AM9/21/18
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Hi Jeffrey,

I realize that this is already old, but I am still running into the same issue. Did you ever find a way to get this working without powering the machine on so that vmware would realize that guest customizations do exist?

Thanks & best regards,
Florian

Jeff Bilbro

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Sep 21, 2018, 9:57:20 AM9/21/18
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No I didn't - I ended up having to power on the VM, then run some scripts to remove log files and such, then power it right back off :(

Florian Apolloner

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Sep 23, 2018, 3:01:36 PM9/23/18
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To bad; same here :( VMware community seems to confirm https://communities.vmware.com/message/2802685

Thanks!
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