Running VMware Tools in a Red Hat virtual machine fails with the error: Trying to overwrite existing RPC registration for upgrader.create! Aborted

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

In a RHEL 5 or later virtual machine, you experience these symptoms:

• VMware Tools installs successfully
• The vSphere Client reports the status of VMware Tools as Not Running
• Running the service vmware-tools command reports that VMware Tools is not running
• Running the ps -ef command reports that /usr/sbin/vmtoolsd is not running
• Running the /usr/sbin/vmtoolsd -l command fails
• You see an error similar to:
  
  [Dec 20 18:38:34.585: ] [ error] [vmsvc] Trying to overwrite existing RPC registration for upgrader.create!
  Aborted

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware ESX 4.0.x

Cause

This issue occurs if there are old library files in the /etc/vmware-tools/plugins/vmsvc directory.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, delete the old library files.

To delete the old library files:

1. Log in to the virtual machine using SSH as the root user.
2. Run this command to navigate to the directory that contains the virtual machine library files:
   
   # cd /etc/vmware-tools/plugins/vmsvc
   
3. Run this command to list the contents of the directory:
   
   # ls
   
   You see an output similar to:
   
   # libautoUpgrade.so.old.0 libguestInfo.so.old.0 libpowerOps.so.old.0
   
   
4. Run this command to delete the old library files in the format libname.so.old.0:
   
   # rm lib*.so.old.*
   
   
5. Run this command to start the vmware-tools service:
   
   # service vmware-tools start
   
   
6. To check the status of vmware-tools, run this command:
   
   # service vmware-tools status
   
   You see an output similar to:
   
   # vmtoolsd is running