12.5 / Red Hat Enterprise 5 / VMWare Tools

[deanrobinson]

Hi,

We have been doing a trial of BE12.5 looking at the VMWare agent and GRT.

We have been getting failures on some Linux machines and I have identified it only happens to the ones which have VMWare Tools installed.  The error details are below but all the info I can find related to Windows and VSS. 

Final error: 0xe000954c - An error occurred while running the VMware 'vcbMounter' command to back up a virtual machine. See the job log for details.
Final error category: Resource Errors

Backup- VMVCB::\\<FQDN of machine removed>\VCGuestVm\(DC)ha-datacenter(DC)\vm\Hawkes V-79-57344-38220 - Backup of the virtual machine 'Hawkes' failed. VMware VCB framework reported the following error
Error: Other error encountered: Snapshot creation failed: Custom pre-freeze script failed.

I'm at a loss.  Licenses arrive soon so I can call support but wondered if anyone else had seen this?

I have tried turning GRT off and that doesn't make a difference.  The backup job still fails within 45 seconds with the error above.  This seems specific to Linux with VMWare tools installed.  There are no VSS type options with VMware tools on RHEL5.

Any suggestions?
Thanks
Dean

P.s. Forgot to mention - this is using NBD already - different effor message when using SAN backup which is not configured.

[Ben_L_]

Try doing a "Complete" install of the VMWare tools instead of a "Typical" install and try the backup again.  From what I have read on the vmware forums, that error is because of a driver issue that is resolved by doing a Complete install.

[deanrobinson]

There is no option for install type when doing rpm install on RHEL5.  It just installs.  Only config option is "What dize screen do you want X Windows  to use".

That is it.

[deanrobinson]

Solved my own problem....

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1183943;jsessionid=5589984161669B681BA1A5B9C6D4A264

Basically it is an issue with the current VMWare Tools (ESX 3.5 Update 4 Build 153875).  The pre-freeze-script file is missing.

Action to fix:

On the Linux machines create a file in /usr/sbin called pre-freeze-script (Just a blank file!!  Use touch).

Run the backup again, it all works!!!

[Ben_L_]

Can you link the htm file of the job log to your post so I can pull some additional information for a technote?

[deanrobinson]

A wider trial has revealed that not all machine problems are resolved using this method.

This is a problem with VMWare Tools with 3.5 and the Syamntec agent.  There are several other people with the problem posting in different forums.

Solutions which have worked for some people include:

1) Uninstall and reinstall VMWare tools on Linux VM
2) Reconfigure VMWare tools on Linux VM
3) Migrate Linux VM to another host
4) Reboot ESX host
5) As per above - create pre-freeze-scripts file.
6) Delete any snapshots

Backup suceeds if:

1) The machine is physcially turned off
2) VMWare tools are removed

Most people seem to believe it is to do with quiescense.  I have treid turning this off in config.js - no joy.

Does anyone know what Symantec needs the pre-freeze-script for, whenther a dummy file can be created or if the job can be told not to look for this file.  I really need this info to see if I can work out a resolution which works on all hosts......

[Danko_B_]

Hello,

I have same problem with Symantec Backup Exec 12.5 SP2 Rev. 2213 + VMware Agent.
VMware Virtual Center 2.5, VCB Framework and Symantec backup exec 12.5 are installed on same machine.

Virtual machines are running on VMware ESX Server, 3.5.0, 153875

After installing VMtools on several Linux virtual machines (Ubuntu server), backup stop working. I had to uninstall VMtools on all Linux VM.

The error log is:
Backup of the virtual machine 'machinename' failed. VMware VCB framework reported the following error
Error: Other error encountered: Snapshot creation failed: Custom pre-freeze script failed.

I try to create a blank file /usr/sbin/pre-freeze-script on linux VM, but with no results.

Aftter uninstalling VMtools on linux machines, backup works again.
Backup also wokrs if guest virtual machine is not running.

I also try to reboot VC & BackupExec machine, but not help.

Any idea??