RHEL Guest Operating system reports the warning: [Gtk] Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: clearlooks

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• In the Messages.log file, RHEL Guest Operating system continuously reports these warning messages:
  
  vmhkgitt3 vmusr[5051]: [ warning] [Gtk] Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "clearlooks", vmhkgitt3 vmusr[5051]: [ warning] [Gtk] Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "clearlooks", vmhkgitt3 vmusr[5051]: [ warning] [Gtk] Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "clearlooks", vmhkgitt3 vmusr[5051]: [ warning] [Gtk] Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "clearlooks",

 

• Installing RPM gtk2-engines-2.18.4-5.el6.i686, gtk2-engines-2.18.4-5.el6.x86_64 by performing the steps provided in RHEL article 235673 does not resolve this issue.
• In the st.out logs from Guest Operating System, you see entries similar to:

access("/usr/lib/vmware-tools/libconf/lib/gtk-2.0/modules/2.10.0/x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu/engines/libclearlooks.so", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) <0.000037> access("/usr/lib/vmware-tools/libconf/lib/gtk-2.0/modules/2.10.0/x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu/engines/libclearlooks.la", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) <0.000031>

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0

Cause

This issue occurs when location of gtk-2.0 that vmtoolsd looks for is different from where gtk-2.0 is installed on RHEL guest Operating system.

Resolution

These messages does not impact any functionality of VMware tools in Guest Operating System and can be safely ignored.

Currently, there is no resolution.

To work around this issue, perform one of these options:

Work around 1:
 

1. cd /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib32/libconf or /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib64/libconf
2. mkdir lib
3. cp gtk-2.0 lib/
4. logout and login again or stop the vmtoolsd process and then start vmtoolsd by running this command:
   
   /usr/lib/sbin64/vmtoolsd -n vmusr --blockFd 3 &

Note: We manually created /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib32{lib64}/libconf/lib.When uninstalling the Tools by running /usr/bin/vmware-uninstall-tools.pl, /usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib32{lib64}/libconf/lib will not be removed.
Manually remove /usr/lib/vmware-tools for a clean uninstall.

Work around 2:

1. Uninstall the tools by running /usr/bin/vmware-uninstall-tools.pl
2. cd vmware-tools-distrib from uncompressed tools tarball
3. cd lib/lib32/libconf or lib/lib64/libconf
4. mkdir lib
5. cp gtk-2.0 lib/
6. Install the tools by running the command:
   
   vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl

Notes:

• In this case, uninstalling tools in future does not require any additional steps.
• The following message may still be seen in the messages log:
  
  [Gtk] gtk_disable_setlocale() must be called before gtk_init()

Additional Information