VMware virtual machines will not be renewed from the command line

Question

I am running a VMWare workstation on Ubuntu 10.10. I have a series of virtual machines that I clone every week.

I wrote a bash script that cycles through each of the virtual machines, gently pauses it, clones it and then tries to resume it.

The problem is that the virtual machine does not resume, so I have to manually resume them. I am trying to figure out how I can change the script that I wrote in order to resume virtual machines. I included a script and a sample of the generated log file displaying an error message.

#!/bin/bash

##Author:   William Cooper
##Date: 2/15/2011
## Purpose:     Perform full backups of Virtual Machines
##      Running under VMWare Workstation

## Script won't run if the /nas directory doesn't exist
## The /nas directory is a mounted Buffalo Terastation
## Check /etc/fstab if this mountpoint is broken
   BACKUPDEST="/nas"

## No need to modify
   HOST=`hostname`
   DATEFILE=`/bin/date +%G%m%d`

## Run Command to find list of VM names:
## this will only be the name of the vm, no path and no .vmx
   VMLIST=`vmrun list | grep '/' | cut -d'/' -f3 | cut -d'.' -f1`

## Initialize Counter variable used to cycle through VMs in VMARRAY variable
   COUNTER=1

## Run Command to find list of VM Names and then store them in an Array:
## This will include full pathnames
   VMARRAY=( `vmrun list | grep '/'` )

#################################################################
## Functions

##
## Notify the starting time of backup in the log
##
function startScript {
   echo
   echo "----------------------------------------------------"
   echo "START - ${VM}"
   echo "Host: ${HOST}"
   echo "Date: `date`"
   echo
}

##
## Suspend VM
##
function suspendVM {
   ## Suspend the VM
   echo "Attempting to softly suspend "${VM}" . . ."
   vmrun suspend ${VMARRAY[${COUNTER}]} soft
   echo "${VM} Suspended on `date`"
   echo
}

##
## Backup VM
##
function doBackup {

   ## Check to see if the correct backup directory exists.
   if [ ! -d ${BACKUPDEST}/${VM} ]; then
      echo "${BACKUPDEST}/${VM} does not exist, creating . . ."
      mkdir "${BACKUPDEST}/${VM}"
      echo
   fi

   ## Backup VM (clone)
   echo "Backup of "${VM}" began: `date`"
   echo "Backup to ${BACKUPDEST}/${VM}/BACKUP/${DATEFILE} . . ."
   mkdir ${BACKUPDEST}/${VM}/BACKUP/${DATEFILE}
   vmrun clone ${VMARRAY[${COUNTER}]} ${BACKUPDEST}/${VM}/BACKUP/${DATEFILE}/${VM}.vmx full
   echo "Backup of "${VM}" ended: `date`"
   echo
}

##
## Start VM
##
function doStart {
   ## Resume VMs which were running [--type gui|sdl|vrdp|headless]
   echo "Attempting to resume "${VM}" . . ."
   vmrun start ${VMARRAY[${COUNTER}]}
   echo "${VM} Resumed on `date`"
   echo
}

##
## Notify the finishing time of backup in the log
##
function finishScript {
   echo "FINISH - ${VM}"
   echo "Host: ${HOST}"
   echo "Date: `date`"
   echo "----------------------------------------------------"
   echo
}

#################################################################
## Script

for VM in ${VMLIST}
do

   sleep 1
   ## StartScrip executes for logging
      startScript

   ## Suspend VM performs soft suspend
      suspendVM
      sleep 3

   ## Do Backup performs the VM clone
      doBackup
      sleep 3

   ## Start VM performs start vm
      doStart
      sleep 3

   ## FinishScript executes for logging
      finishScript

   ## Increment the Counter
      COUNTER=${COUNTER}+1

done | tee "${BACKUPDEST}/logs/VMClone_${DATEFILE}.log"

## Script
#################################################################
exit

The following is an example of a generated log file for each virtual machine.

----------------------------------------------------
START - vmname
Host: servername
Date: Sat Feb 19 12:30:29 CST 2011

Attempting to softly suspend vmname . . .
vmname Suspended on Sat Feb 19 12:30:44 CST 2011

Backup of vmname began: Sat Feb 19 12:30:47 CST 2011
Backup to /nas/vmname/BACKUP/20110219 . . .
Backup of vmname ended: Sat Feb 19 12:43:16 CST 2011

Attempting to resume vmname . . .
Error: Cannot launch the UI because no display server is present in the current environment
vmname Resumed on Sat Feb 19 12:43:20 CST 2011

FINISH - vmname
Host: servername
Date: Sat Feb 19 12:43:23 CST 2011
----------------------------------------------------

: ,

Answer 1

, , .

• Ubuntu 10.10 x64
• VMware 7

. ​​VMware "Run in the Background" .

Answer 2

nogui paramater start, :

vmrun start yourmachine.vmx nogui

: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vix180_vmrun_command.pdf

Answer 3

try running echo $ DISPLAY on the TTY terminal where the vmware workstation is running. Echo $ DISPLAY will return as: 1000.0 you need to install export DISPLAY = ": 1000.0" to the script. then the script will resume the virtual machine. I found this to work when I use Areca backups to resume my virtual machine using the postscript running in Areca.

Answer 4

If the problem is that you are starting vmrun from an ssh session, another solution might start a screen session on the server.

at the workplace of the machine:

screen -S vmware

on the client machine

ssh vmware-machine
screen -x vmware
vmrun start /path/to/vm.vmx