Guest OS Customization may fail on Linux due to cleanup /tmp at boot

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
In case of error you may observe:

1. Customization does NOT take effect, no items in customization specification are applied to customized VM.
2. Open-VM-Tools/VMware Tools version is older than 10.3.10
3. There is no /var/log/vmware-imc/toolsDeployPkg.log exists on customized VM
4. VM network adapter is disconnected on customized VM
5. Systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service is enabled on customized VM

Cause

• It has been identified that enabling Systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service executes 'systemd-tmpfiles --clean' at Linux boot to clean up volatile and temporary files and directories, with default configuration file while this happens, customization package in /tmp folder might be deleted from VM which is customized and powered-on. This causes the customization operation to fail.

Resolution

To workaround the issue you can choose either of the below steps:

• Upgrade Open-VM-Tools/VMware Tools version to 10.3.10 or above version.This would resolve the issue as the customization package is not stored in /tmp folder as in the previous versions.
• Modify systemd-tmpfiles configuration file at /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf, comment out line "D /tmp 1777 root root -".