SRM IP customization will fail when the guest OS root username is renamed, vix error code = (1, 2)

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

If you rename the root user account of a VM (CentOS 7) to a different name (hfroot) , meaning the root account in CentOS /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow is now changed to hfroot instead of root.

Trying to failover the VM with IP customization will fail with vix error code (1, 2).

vgauthsvc.log :

2023-10-27T02:05:29.228Z] [ message] [VGAuthService] VGAuthService 'build-15389592' logging at level 'normal'
[2023-10-27T02:05:29.228Z] [ message] [VGAuthService] Pref_LogAllEntries: 1 preference groups in file '/etc/vmware-tools/vgauth.conf'
[2023-10-27T02:05:29.228Z] [ message] [VGAuthService] Group 'service'
[2023-10-27T02:05:29.228Z] [ message] [VGAuthService] 	 samlSchemaDir=/etc/vmware-tools/vgauth/schemas
[2023-10-27T02:05:29.228Z] [ message] [VGAuthService] Pref_LogAllEntries: End of preferences
[2023-10-27T02:05:29.229Z] [ message] [VGAuthService] INIT SERVICE
[2023-10-27T02:05:29.229Z] [ message] [VGAuthService] Using '/var/lib/vmware/VGAuth/aliasStore' for alias store root directory
[2023-10-27T02:05:29.230Z] [ warning] [VGAuthService] ServiceFileVerifyFileOwnerAndPerms: Unable to look up userinfo of 'root' to check ownership of '/var/lib/vmware/VGAuth/aliasStore'
[2023-10-27T02:05:29.230Z] [ warning] [VGAuthService] ServiceFileVerifyFileOwnerAndPerms: Unable to look up userinfo of 'root' to check ownership of '/var/lib/vmware/VGAuth/aliasStore', but found valid entry for uid 0
[2023-10-27T02:05:29.230Z] [ warning] [VGAuthService] ServiceFileRenameFile: g_rename(/var/lib/vmware/VGAuth/aliasStore, /var/lib/vmware/VGAuth/aliasStore.bad) failed (17)
[2023-10-27T02:05:29.231Z] [ warning] [VGAuthService] ServiceStartAndRun: failed to init alias store; exiting

Environment

VMware Site Recovery Manager 8.x

Cause

root user account (user id = 0) was renamed.  SRM need VMware tools to perform IP customization. However, VMware Guest Authentication Service (vgauth) doesn't work without root account. SRM does not support renaming the root account of Linux guest OS.

Resolution

Renaming root account is not officially supported by Linux, and vgauth has to check the root account to facilitate IP customization.

Workaround:

Keep the root account as is and create other users with root roles.