Init script hangs on EC2 in vmware-checkvm

[Ed Swierk]

Binary package hint: open-vm-tools

Running an Ubuntu 10.10 UEC VM on Amazon EC2 (ami-b7e4b4f2), installing the open-vm-tools package (2010.06.16-268169-3ubuntu1) hangs apt-get when running the /etc/init.d/open-vm-tools script. (Yes, it's pointless to install open-vm-tools on EC2 or Xen, but hanging seems too severe a punishment.)

The script runs vmware-checkvm to see whether it's running on VMware. This program tries to read from a magic IO port 0x5658, but this just hangs when running on EC2.

Assuming the problem is Xen and not EC2 specifically, either the init script or vmware-checkvm.c could test for the existence of the /proc/xen directory before attempting the IO port read.

[Serge Hallyn (serge-hallyn)]

Thanks for reporting this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

I'm marking this confirmed based on
http://xen.1045712.n5.nabble.com/Re-ioctl-00005382-not-supported-by-Xen-blkdev-td2563654.html

The added check seems like a good idea. Would you be willing to contact the upstream vmware developers to see if they are willing to add it?

[Ed Swierk (eswierk)]

Upstream bug https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3231992&group_id=204462&atid=989708 is supposedly fixed, but I haven't been able to verify due to another bug https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3308802&group_id=204462&atid=989708 .