ESXi: lwsmd Service Fails to Start After Reboot, Causing Active Directory Login Failures

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

^{After rebooting an ESXi host, Active Directory (AD) users are unable to log in. Upon inspection, the lwsmd service (Likewise Service Manager Daemon) is found to be in a stopped state.}

^{As a result:}

• ^{AD-based authentication fails.}
• ^{The ESXi host no longer appears to be joined to the AD domain.}

Environment

^{VMware vSphere Esxi 6.x}

^{VMware vSphere Esxi 7.x}

^{VMware vSphere Esxi 8.x}

Cause

^{This behavior is caused by unexpected entries in the Likewise registry database, which interfere with the normal startup of the lwsmd service after a reboot.}

^{The Likewise registry database is located at:
/etc/likewise/db/registry.db}

^{When this database contains inconsistent or invalid configuration data, it prevents the lwsmd service from initializing correctly.}

Resolution

^{To resolve the issue, follow the procedure outlined in the following Broadcom Knowledge Base article:
🔗 KB 345400 – ESXi: lwsmd Service Does Not Start Due to Likewise Registry Issues}

^{Summary of Resolution Steps (from the linked KB):}

^{Copy the likewise DB file from a working host.}

• ^{Connect to ESXi host through ssh.}
• ^{Take a backup of /etc/likewise/db/registry.db, preferably copy to one of the datastore.} 
• ^{Connect to another working host which is joined to domain and copy /etc/likewise/db/registry.db to the host with problem.}
• ^{Reboot the host and restart lwsmd service.} 
• ^{Attempt to join host to domain.} 

Additional Information

^{Important Notes:}

• ^{Ensure DNS and time synchronization are correctly configured before rejoining the domain.}
• ^{Always allow the Likewise service to manage domain joins—do not manually create AD computer objects.}