SSH login in VAMI becomes deactivated and broken

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• SSH to vCenter Server fails
• SSH works after rebooting vCenter Server

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 8.0

Cause

SSH collector handling issue

 

The function `_scanServerIP` is trying to get the system ip from the dns server `8.8.8.8` and if the network fails or timeout it should just move ahead with ll `127.0.0.1`. however socket exception of socket.error has been changed in python > 3.3 and hence the exception handling in the function is not working as expected.

Resolution

VMware Engineering is working on this known issue and is working to fix it in the next release.
 

Workaround:

As a workaround, perform the following:

1. Open a VM console to the vCenter Server VM
   • Alternatively, you may attempt to SSH to vCenter after rebooting vCenter
2. Back up the ssh_access_collector.py file

cp /usr/lib/applmgmt/transport/py/vmware/vherd/transport/ssh_access_collector.py /usr/lib/applmgmt/transport/py/vmware/vherd/transport/ssh_access_collector.py.bak

3. Edit the ssh_access_collector.py

vi /usr/lib/applmgmt/transport/py/vmware/vherd/transport/ssh_access_collector.py

4. Navigate to line 211 and change the following:

Before
except socket.error as error:

After
except OSError as error

Note: Please note the indentations. 

5. Navigate to line 212 and change the following:

Before
errorcode = error[0]

After
errorcode = error.errno

Note: Please note the indentations. 

6. Save the file.
7. Restart the applmgmt service

service-control --restart applmgmt