P2V Conversion failing at 98% on Converter version 6.2 with RHEL/Cent OS 7.6 machines

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
Converting a powered-on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 or CentOS 7.6 machine with a kernel that was updated to 3.10.0-957.5.1 fails at 98% with the following error:
 Unable to reconfigure the destination virtual machine.

In the Task Progress tab, you see the following: An error occurred during the conversion: 'SysCommandWrapper: Error encountered in SysCommand: SysCommand failed to wait /usr/lib/vmware-converter/chrootAndExec.sh to terminate.

Unable to convert CentOS or RHEL after updating the OS to 7.6
The issue does appear with a fresh install of 7.6

Run this command and validate if the kernel is 3.10.0-957.5.1 or above
rpm -qa | grep -i kernel

Environment

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 6.x

Cause

helper.log

2019-02-27T12:03:37.267Z verbose vmware-converter-helper[F3357B70] [Originator@6876 sub=task-1] args[6]: grub-install
2019-02-27T12:03:37.368Z verbose vmware-converter-helper[F3357B70] [Originator@6876 sub=task-1] LogResult: Command return code: 127
2019-02-27T12:03:37.368Z verbose vmware-converter-helper[F3357B70] [Originator@6876 sub=task-1] LogResult: Command stderr:
--> /vmware-updateGrub.sh: line 63: grub-install: command not found
--> /vmware-updateGrub.sh: line 71: grub-install: command not found
--> Error installing GRUB
--> Command: grub-install --force --no-floppy /dev/sda
--> Error running vmware-updateGrub.sh through chroot into /mnt/p2v-src-root
--> Command: chroot "/mnt/p2v-src-root" /vmware-updateGrub.sh "GRUB2" "(hd0)" "(hd0,1)" /vmware-device.map "grub-install"
-->
2019-02-27T12:03:37.368Z verbose vmware-converter-helper[F3357B70] [Originator@6876 sub=task-1] LogResult: Command stdout:
--> Installing GRUB2 on (hd0)...
--> Installing GRUB2 on (hd0) failed.
--> Installing GRUB2 on /dev/sda...
-->
2019-02-27T12:03:37.368Z error vmware-converter-helper[F3357B70] [Originator@6876 sub=task-1] GrubInstaller::InstallGrub: /usr/lib/vmware-converter/installGrub.sh failed with return code: 127, and message:
--> /vmware-updateGrub.sh: line 63: grub-install: command not found
--> /vmware-updateGrub.sh: line 71: grub-install: command not found
--> Error installing GRUB
--> Command: grub-install --force --no-floppy /dev/sda
--> Error running vmware-updateGrub.sh through chroot into /mnt/p2v-src-root
--> Command: chroot "/mnt/p2v-src-root" /vmware-updateGrub.sh "GRUB2" "(hd0)" "(hd0,1)" /vmware-device.map "grub-install"
-->
--> Installing GRUB2 on (hd0)...
--> Installing GRUB2 on (hd0) failed.
--> Installing GRUB2 on /dev/sda...
-->

2019-02-19T06:19:10.682Z info vmware-converter-helper[F2F49B70] [Originator@6876 sub=task-1] GRUB installer context: grubCfgFilepath:/boot/grub2/grub.cfg, oldBootDisk:0, oldBootPartition:1, newBootDiskDevice:/dev/sda, newBootPartition:1, newBootVgName:, newBootLvName:, rootPartitionDevice:/dev/rhel/root, rootPartitionPath:/mnt/p2v-src-root, bootIsSeparate:1, kernelVersion:3.10.0-957.5.1.el7.x86_64, allowFakedInitrd: 1, bootOnGpt:0, callGrubInstall: 1
2019-02-19T06:49:13.487Z error vmware-converter-helper[F2F49B70] [Originator@6876 sub=task-1] Patching initrd image failed, trying to recover old config/initrd file
2019-02-19T06:49:13.487Z warning vmware-converter-helper[F2F49B70] [Originator@6876 sub=task-1] RestoreFile: File /mnt/p2v-src-root/boot/initramfs-3.10.0-957.5.1.el7.x86_64.img does not exists

Resolution

Currently Converter Standalone 6.2.x supports the following guest operating systems: CentOS 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5 (64-bit)

See workaround below, Issue is documented in the release notes here 

NOTE: Before attempting new version, do check the OS compatibility with ESXi & converter.

Workaround:
Ensure you have valid backups:

Workaround

1. Before the conversion, open a command line on the source machine and run the following command:
2.  yum downgrade lvm2-libs-2.02.180-10.el7_6.2.x86_64 lvm2-2.02.180-10.el7_6.2.x86_64 device-mapper-event-libs-1.02.149-10.el7_6.2.x86_64 device-mapper-1.02.149-10.el7_6.2.x86_64 device-mapper-libs-1.02.149-10.el7_6.2.x86_64 device-mapper-event-1.02.149-10.el7_6.2.x86_64 
3. After the conversion, run yum update on the target machine.