Ubuntu 14.04 VMware HGFS modules not loaded

[mitchellh]

Hi! It looks like the HGFS modules aren't properly installed (or they break at some point) for the Ubuntu 14.04 box. Let me know if I can help in any way. Thanks!

[juliandunn]

Pretty sure this is the same as #232. When I get back to a location with good Internet I'll rebuild the boxes with a non-broken version of Virtualbox.

[juliandunn]

Whoops, I misread - you were talking about the VMWare modules, not VirtualBox modules. I can't reproduce this with the VMWare box. Can you provide some more details @mitchellh ?

[bryantraywick]

I had this same issue. I was able to resolve it by rebuilding the ubuntu-14.04 box with VMWare Fusion 7.0.1 installed. I think it is an incompatibility between the vmware tools in VMWare Fusion 6.x and 7.x. I'm not entirely sure why this issue doesn't occur for the 10.04 and 12.04 boxes.

I also had to change the guest_os_type from ubuntu-64 to Ubuntu-64 in order to get the packer build past the "Starting virtual machine..." step.

[juliandunn]

Yes, I am still building boxes with VMWare Fusion 6.x. Maybe that's the problem.

[rickard-von-essen]

Works fine for me with VMWare Fusion 7.0.0 without changing the casing of guest_os_type.

[haraldsk]

I can verify this issue.

Ubuntu 14.04 boxes built with packer on VMWare Fusion 7.0.0 does not work on VMWare 7.0.1.

I can provide you with my "vagrant up --debug" logs for 7.0.0 and 7.0.1 if you are interested.

The issue seem to affect 14.04 only, my centos 6 and 7 boxes are working fine. I'm keeping my company on 7.0.0 as a workaround for now.

[haraldsk]

Just want to note that I'm not using bento. But my own though similar build scripts. So I'm suspecting this is VMWare/Ubuntu related.

When starting a 7.0.0 built image on 7.0.1 the vmhgfs.ko module seem to vanish from the image at some point.

[dpehrson]

Is there any plan to publish updated boxes that are built with the latest VMWare Fusion 7? Currently hosting my own build of ubuntu 14.04 but would prefer to switch back to the official ones.

[rasa]

https://github.com/rasa/vmware-tools-patches may fix this issue.

[mathiasson]

FWIW, just re-running vmware-config-tools.pl and let it rebuild the kernel modules solves the problem, no need to actually upgrade them. Using Fusion 7.1.0.

[juliandunn]

@dpehrson Yes there is; I just need to finish confirming internally that all our folks who care about this are on Fusion 7.

[thasmo]

@juliandunn, has this been fixed for the boxes hosted on vagrantcloud/atlas? I'm using chef/ubuntu-14.10 and have problems with HGFS not being found by Vagrant. I'm using VMware Workstation 11.0.0 build-2305329 on Windows 8.1 64-bit.

Vagrant outputs:

==> default: Waiting for HGFS kernel module to load...
The HGFS kernel module was not found on the running virtual machine.
This must be installed for shared folders to work properly. Please
install the VMware tools within the guest and try again. Note that
the VMware tools installation will succeed even if HGFS fails
to properly install. Carefully read the output of the VMware tools
installation to verify the HGFS kernel modules were installed properly.

Thanks a lot for your feedback!

[juliandunn]

@thasmo Not yet. I'm on holidays and will look at it in the new year... I was trying to get a VMWare Fusion upgrade before I left.

[thasmo]

@juliandunn, thanks. Enjoy the holidays! :)

[thasmo]

@juliandunn, any progress on the VMWare upgrade?

[juliandunn]

Yes, I procured a VMWare Fusion 7 license. Those of you who are having problems, can you check out this scratch build:

https://jdunn-getchef-scratch.s3.amazonaws.com/opscode_ubuntu-14.04_chef-provisionerless.box

and let me know if that fixes the issue? It has been built with Fusion 7.0.3.

[thasmo]

@juliandunn, thanks a lot - works for me using Workstation 11 on Windows 8.1. Are you going to update the Ubuntu 14.10 boxes on Atlas also?

[juliandunn]

@thasmo Yes, I will have to rebuild everything for Fusion 7.

[juliandunn]

I have rebuilt at least the 14.04 boxes for VMWare Fusion 7 and put them on Atlas.

[thasmo]

@juliandunn, nice! What about the other boxes including Ubuntu 14.10?

[juliandunn]

@thasmo Haven't finished building those yet.

[dnelson]

I still only see version 1.0.0 on the atlas site. Was this a silent update? Removing the box from my machine and re-downloading it seems to have fixed things, so I assume so. Can we get a revision bump so people can just run vagrant box update to get the fix?

[beddari]

As far as I know versioning boxes on Atlas is outside the scope of the project ...

[juliandunn]

That's correct, we currently do not version boxes in this project. Some day we might, but there are no resources presently to do that level of integration with Atlas.

[dnelson]

OK, thanks for providing the boxes!

[thasmo]

@juliandunn, did you already have time to build new 14.10 boxes? The ones on Atlas currently don't work with VMware Workstation 11.

[juliandunn]

@thasmo I just uploaded them. Sorry about that - thought I'd done so already.

[thasmo]

@juliandunn, np - thanks for providing them! :)

[josegonzalez]

Seems the current images don't work with Vmware Fusion 7.1.1 Pro, can anyone else confirm?

[jvanbaarsen]

I can confirm that the current image does not work with VmWare Fusion 7.1.1 Pro.

[bklang]

I'm seeing the same issue with VMware Fusion 7.1.1. The advice given above to log into the guest and run sudo-vmware-config-tools.pl seems to be the best workaround. Note that in my case I needed to first install the gcc and linux-headers-$(uname -r) packages. My guess is that this will be a bit of a cat-and-mouse game, with the VMware Tools getting updated, and the guest box being out of date.

[fnichol]

I will try a run against VMware Fusion 7.1.2 which came out only a day or 2 ago. It was a major blocker for any newer kernel version working with HGFS. Sad pandas all around.

[geerlingguy]

Seeing similar issues with my (non-bento) boxes for CentOS 6 and 7, Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04: geerlingguy/ansible-role-packer-debian#3 and geerlingguy/ansible-role-packer_rhel#4 — I have CentOS 6 fixed now (using Ansible to do the installation steps), but I'm still working on the other 3 OSes. Just wanted to link these issues as the work/solutions in the tickets can build off each other.

[jtimberman]

Also seeing HGFS module hang. I downloaded the current box to my system:

% kitchen converge
-----> Starting Kitchen (v1.4.1)
-----> Creating <default-ubuntu-1404>...
       Bringing machine 'default' up with 'vmware_fusion' provider...
       ==> default: Box 'opscode-ubuntu-14.04' could not be found. Attempting to find and install...
           default: Box Provider: vmware_desktop, vmware_fusion, vmware_workstation
           default: Box Version: >= 0
       ==> default: Adding box 'opscode-ubuntu-14.04' (v0) for provider: vmware_desktop, vmware_fusion, vmware_workstation
           default: Downloading: https://opscode-vm-bento.s3.amazonaws.com/vagrant/vmware/opscode_ubuntu-14.04_chef-provisionerless.box
==> default: Successfully added box 'opscode-ubuntu-14.04' (v0) for 'vmware_desktop'!
       ==> default: Cloning VMware VM: 'opscode-ubuntu-14.04'. This can take some time...
       ==> SNIP SNIP
       ==> default: Waiting for HGFS kernel module to load...

I let it go until it ultimately timed out.

[tisba]

I'm running into the same issue using VMware Fusion Version 8.0.0 (2985594) on OS X 10.10.5 (with Ubuntu 14.04).

[cheeseplus]

Pretty sure this is the same issue as #377 or at the very least related.

[tisba]

@mathiasson @bklang Do you still have success with installing the VMware Tools again with VMware Fusion Version 8.0.0 (2985594)? I just cannot get it to work at all currently :-/

[bklang]

@tisba Sorry, I no longer use Vagrant with Fusion so I can't say.

[tiwilliam]

Got same error when building my own box and this doesn't look right:

==> vmware-iso: Provisioning with shell script: scripts/common/vmtools.sh
    vmware-iso: + HOME_DIR=/home/vagrant
    vmware-iso: + mkdir -p /tmp/vmfusion
    vmware-iso: + mkdir -p /tmp/vmfusion-archive
    vmware-iso: + mount -o loop /home/vagrant/linux.iso /tmp/vmfusion
    vmware-iso: mount: block device /home/vagrant/linux.iso is write-protected, mounting read-only
    vmware-iso: + tar xzf /tmp/vmfusion/VMwareTools-10.0.0-2977863.tar.gz -C /tmp/vmfusion-archive
    vmware-iso: + /tmp/vmfusion-archive/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl --default
    vmware-iso: open-vm-tools are available from the OS vendor and VMware recommends using
    vmware-iso: open-vm-tools. See http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2073803 for more information.
    vmware-iso: Do you still want to proceed with this legacy installer? [no]
    vmware-iso:
    vmware-iso: + umount /tmp/vmfusion
    vmware-iso: + rm -rf /tmp/vmfusion
    vmware-iso: + rm -rf /tmp/vmfusion-archive
    vmware-iso: + rm -f /home/vagrant/linux.iso

More info on the issue here:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2107676

[tiwilliam]

Confirmed working when switching from default to force-install, not sure if this have any other side effects:

-    /tmp/vmfusion-archive/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl --default;
+    /tmp/vmfusion-archive/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl --force-install;

[tisba]

There is a lot of output (gist), pointing to using "open-vm-tools" (http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2073803). I'm not very experienced when it comes to this stuff, but I wasn't able to get shared folders to work using just "open-vm-tools".

Anyhow, when I patch vmtools.sh as described by @tiwilliam it seems to work fine.

[phinze]

Hey folks, I'm also unable to get open-vm-tools to load the hgfs kernel moadule.

Relevant reading:

• https://communities.vmware.com/thread/474260
• Ubuntu 14.04.02 vmhgfs compile failure (VMwareTools-9.9.2-2496486) rasa/vmware-tools-patches#29

Seems like the --force-install workaround is worth adding for now, yeah?