ESX Host is only accesisable via SSH, vmware-hostd always stops running!!

[KIDA_Solutions]

• My problem seems to look like this thread:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/82364

• The host can 't be added to VC and can not be accessed by the VI client. Only via SSH Putty I can acces the service console

• If I run "service mgmt-vmware status" it says that de vmware-hostd is stopped

• If I restart the service with " service mgmt-vmware restart" the vmware-hostd runs for 1 sec and then stops.

• Even the "vmware-cmd l" is not responding

Anybody has a solution for this without rebooting this host?There are a lot of production servers are running on it

Thanks!

[Rubeck]

What does your /var/log/vmware/hostd.log say?

I think that If hostd is not running, vmwáre specific commands will fail..... and thats wht vmware-cmd -l dosn't respond.

/Rubeck

[Rubeck]

BTW: If your hostd crashes it might create dumps in /var/core.... If running with derfault partitioning your / will soon become full... Keep an eye on it..

/Rubeck

[Kida]

Thanks Rubeck for the tip!!!!

The /var/core was full. I deleted the .core files and restarted the mgmt-vmware and go!

[Rubeck]

Ohhh... Good to hear

Keep an eye on it for a while, as there's gotta be some kind of reason to why hostd has createed these dumps..

/Rubeck

[Kida]

Bad luck.... hostd is running but de host is continue losing the connection with VC...

It says connected, not responding and suddenly it is connected again.... strange....

Do you have new tips?

[Rubeck]

Have you tried to reload the VC Agent (service vmware-vpxa restart)? And if posiible, remove and re- add host to VC...

/Rubeck

[Jasemccarty]

What does the space look like on your host?

Try a "vdf -h" to see if you have any full volumes.

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Check out /var/log/vmware/hostd.log for help on why hostd is crashing. It should not. It sounds like some sort of misconfiguration within the XML files for hostd. So the logs are the first place to look after disk space issues.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[Kida]

Here you can see my hostd.log file.... for me it seems all ok?

[Kida]

Some of my LUN's are filled for 98% can this be a problem?

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Yes. Your free space on / needs to be higher. I tend to create the following file systems and never run into disk issues:

swap -> 2GB

/boot -> 200MBs

/ -> 5GB

/var -> 5GB

/var/log -> 5GB

/tmp -> 5GB

/home -> 5GB

/vmimages -> 5GB (maybe more)... If I do not use /vmimages for ISO storage I use a VMFS or NFS share.

If it was me, I may rebuild the server with more disk space assigned to different partitions/filesystems instead of one large / filesystem. It helps alleviate the problems with / filling up.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[Rubeck · Accepted solution]

I think its funny that VMware chose to do hostd dumps in /var/core and not /var/log/core per default...? Considering the default partitioning scheme suggested during initial install...:-)

/Rubeck