Deans Blog

On remediating virtual machines using the Update Manager, a number of VMware Tools upgrades would fail reporting the following:

Error Upgrading VMware Tools
vix error code = 21009

On investigation of vix error codes at https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vix-api/vix16_reference/errors/errors.html there was error code reference for the above. So now it was time to look at the vmware.log file for one of the impacted virtual machines, to which I found the following log entry

TOOLS INSTALL Error copying upgrader binary into guest. success = 0, HgfsStatus = 8

A quick search of the VMware KB, returned the following http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1023459 where the cause of the issue is that the file ‘VMwareToolsUpgrader.exe’ located at ‘C:\Windows\Temp’ only has read-only permissions.

In order to resolve the issue, I removed the file ‘VMwareToolsUpgrader.exe’ from one of the virtual machines returning the error, and attempted to remediate from the attached baseline to which this completed with success.

Therefore, I was required to remove this file from each virtual machine where the file existed, this is where PowerCLI and in particular the Invoke-VMScript cmdlet come in very useful.

Firstly, we will establish a connection to the vCenter system.

If (-not (Get-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)) 
    {
    Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core | Out-Null 
    }

Connect-VIServer server1.domain.local | Out-Null

Now, we build a collection of virtual machines, in this instance we only require those with a Microsoft Windows guest operating system.

$VMs = Get-VM | Where-Object {$_.Guest.OSFullName -like "*Windows*"}

For each virtual machine retrieved in the collection we will perform an operation to create the script text required to remove the file and then pass the variable to the Invoke-VMscript cmdlet. In this instance the script type will be configured to be ‘Bat’ as a number of virtual machines in the collection may not have Windows Powershell installed, the default script type for the Invoke-VMScript cmdlet.

The script text as below will use conditional logic to determine if the ‘VMwareToolsUpgrader.exe’ file exists and delete the file.

IF EXIST C:\WINDOWS\Temp\VMwareToolsUpgrader.exe DEL C:\WINDOWS\Temp\VMwareToolsUpgrader.exe

I also want to produce output of each virtual machine the operation has been performed on and report the exit code, while also ignoring any Warnings generated where the VMware Tools service is no up to date.

ForEach ($VM in $VMs)

    { 

        $ScriptText = "IF EXIST C:\WINDOWS\Temp\VMwareToolsUpgrader.exe DEL C:\WINDOWS\Temp\VMwareToolsUpgrader.exe"
        
        $Script = Invoke-VMScript -ScriptText $ScriptText -VM $VM.Name -ScriptType Bat -WarningAction SilentlyContinue
        
        "" + $VM.Name + " completed with exit code " + $Script.ExitCode 
    }