vmware-cmd: SystemError=HASH(0x95d8d70)

More tales from the dark side. Trying to start a VM out on an ESXi host:

vmware-cmd  [conn options]  '[datastore] path-to-vm/conf.vmx' start hard

Returns this output:

Fault string: A general system error occurred: Internal error
Fault detail: SystemError=HASH(0x95d8d70)

I spent hours permuting the parameters. And vmware-cmd's -v option doesn't dump out all of the SOAP guts, so I had no view on what was going on. Finally I ran a vifs --dir out on the VM dir and found a bunch of vmware.log files. I fetched one that showed a normal startup and then this:

Nov 05 05:51:51.883: vmx| [msg.License.product.expired] This product has expired.
Nov 05 05:51:51.883: vmx| Be sure that your host machine's date and time are set correctly.

There was a botched version of ESXi that we installed that contained a time bomb, and it had come home to roost. Fair enough - our bad, but certainly there could be a better error message than SystemError=HASH(0x95d8d70).


Charles.