Troubleshooting an Attempted operation cannot be performed in the current state error

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• The virtual machine fails to power on
• When mounting an NFS share from the service console, the virtual machine does not power on if the virtual machine is configured to use an ISO on an NFS mount
• Virtual Infrastructure Client displays the following error message:
  
  Attempted operation cannot be performed in the current state.
  
  
• The following appears in the /var/log/vmware/hostd.log :
  
  [2008-05-02 13:17:11.049 'BaseLibs' 31955888 info] Mount VM completion for vm: /vmfs/volumes/########-####-########d641/isoTest/isoTest.vmx
  [2008-05-02 13:17:11.074 'BaseLibs' 31955888 info] Mount VM Complete: /vmfs/volumes/########-####-########d641/isoTest/isoTest.vmx, Return code: OK
  [2008-05-02 13:17:11.074 'vm:/vmfs/volumes/########-####-########d641/isoTest/isoTest.vmx' 18607024 info] Question info: Invalid value "/vmbuild/GEOS46_FACTORY.iso" for configuration key "ide0:0.fileName". Value was not accepted by rule "Virtual IDE Devices".
  Virtual machine not configured according to rules specified in /etc/vmware/configrules.

Environment

VMware ESX Server 3.5.x

Resolution

Since the Release of ESX 3.5, there is a new file called /etc/vmware/configrules .

This file defines rules in a regex format to determine if a path can be accepted or not.

In this instance, the virtual machine is mapped to an ISO located at /vmbuild/GEOS46_FACTORY.iso and there is no rule in Virtual IDE Devices to allow this pattern.

To resolve the issue, edit /etc/vmware/configrules and add the following rule to the Virtual IDE Devices section, just above accept !prefix "/" :

accept prefix_case "/vmbuild/"

The virtual machine starts on the next power on.