Test recovery for Oracle Linux vms fails with the error "Cannot complete customization, possibly due to a scripting runtime error or invalid script parameters (Error code: 126). IP settings may have been partially applied."

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• This is observed on Oracle Linux 8 vms

• Virtual machines are replicated using vSphere Replication

• When initiating test failover for the virtual machines, the operation fails at Customize IP phase with the below error message

  Cannot complete customization, possibly due to a scripting runtime error or invalid script parameters (Error code: 126). IP settings may have been partially applied.

Environment

VMware Live Site Recovery 9.x

Cause

This issue occurs in Linux virtual machines when the /tmp directory is mounted with the noexec option for security reasons. During the test failover/planned migration, the IP customization phase uploads necessary scripts to the temporary directory (/tmp). When the /tmp directory is mounted with noexec, it will not be able to execute the scripts and complete customization.

Cause Justification:

After the test failover option fails, manually power on the virtual machine on the test network on the DR site and login to the virtual machine. Run less /etc/fstab to check if noexec is set on /tmp

In addition to this, on validating the /opt/vmware/support/logs/srm/vmware-dr.log file on the recovery site, we can see below events indicating that the scripts failed to execute due to insufficient permissions.

2025-11-07T14:44:24.008+05:30 info vmware-dr[02226] [SRM@6876 sub=Recovery ctxID=89c7f8a5 opID=77d4242f-1d23-4d4e-a63a-d04adb59ebf0-test:4e35:8b75:9c3f:fe30:1231] [4b1e262c-5b36-42a0-b9d9-c35a6344eba5.ipCust-protected-vm-14######-IPCustomization]  EXECUTE_SCRIPT_STEP Trigger guest operation execution. Attempt (1 of 22)
2025-11-07T14:44:24.054+05:30 info vmware-dr[1631245] [SRM@6876 sub=Recovery ctxID=89c7f8a5 opID=77d4242f-1d23-4d4e-a63a-d04adb59ebf0-test:4e35:8b75:9c3f:fe30:1231] [4b1e262c-5b36-42a0-b9d9-c35a6344eba5.ipCust-protected-vm-14######-IPCustomization] Started process with pid 4125 in VM [vim.VirtualMachine:33765f57-1426-425f-bbc0-038cbb725323:vm-176562]
2025-11-07T14:44:25.154+05:30 info vmware-dr[02162] [SRM@6876 sub=Recovery ctxID=89c7f8a5 opID=77d4242f-1d23-4d4e-a63a-d04adb59ebf0-test:4e35:8b75:9c3f:fe30:1231] [4b1e262c-5b36-42a0-b9d9-c35a6344eba5.ipCust-protected-vm-14######-IPCustomization] Process 4125 completed with status 126 in VM [vim.VirtualMachine:33765f57-1426-425f-bbc0-038cbb725323:vm-176562]
2025-11-07T14:44:25.327+05:30 error vmware-dr[1631262] [SRM@6876 sub=Recovery ctxID=89c7f8a5 opID=77d4242f-1d23-4d4e-a63a-d04adb59ebf0-test:4e35:8b75:9c3f:fe30:1231] [4b1e262c-5b36-42a0-b9d9-c35a6344eba5.ipCust-protected-vm-14######-IPCustomization] Complete with Error '(dr.recovery.fault.IPCustomizationFailure) {
-->    faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
-->    faultMessage = <unset>,
-->    result = (dr.recovery.CalloutResult) {
-->       commandLine = "echo "Starting IP customization on Linux ..." >> "$VMware_GuestOp_OutputFile"
--> LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$VMware_GuestOp_OutputFolder:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
--> export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
--> chmod 755 "$VMware_GuestOp_File_1"
--> ln -sf "$VMware_GuestOp_File_3" "$VMware_GuestOp_OutputFolder/libmspack.so.0"
--> "$VMware_GuestOp_File_1" -d "$VMware_GuestOp_File_0" --skip-reboot -t 600 >> "$VMware_GuestOp_OutputFile" 2>&1
--> INGUESTCMD_RETURN_VAL=$?
--> export INGUESTCMD_RETURN_VAL
--> cat /var/log/vmware-imc/toolsDeployPkg.log >> "$VMware_GuestOp_OutputFile"
--> echo "Exit code: $INGUESTCMD_RETURN_VAL" >> "$VMware_GuestOp_OutputFile"
--> exit $INGUESTCMD_RETURN_VAL
--> ",
-->       output = "Starting IP customization on Linux ...
--> /tmp/vmware-root_1513-4257003829/srm-vmware194/wrapper.sh: line 44: /tmp/vmware-root_1513-4257003829/srm-vmware194/linuxDeployPkg: Permission denied

Resolution

To address this issue, reach out to your guest OS team and remove noexec for the /tmp directory on the production vm. In cases where this cannot be done due to security concerns, below workaround can be followed.

Please note that these changes should be done on the production vm

1. cd into /etc/vmware-tools folder

2. List the contents of the folder using ls -l command and look for the file tools.conf.example

3. Take a backup of this file by copying it: cp tools.conf.example tools.conf

4. Open the tools.conf file using vi editor: vi tools.conf

5. Search for the pattern TMPDIR

6. Now enter insert mode and remove the comment (#) in front on TMPDIR and set the path to /vmware/temp. If it is already set to this path save the file.

7. Now go to the root folder and check if there exists vmware/temp folder. If not, create these folders at the root level:
   cd /
mkdir vmware
cd vmware
mkdir temp

8. Validate if the folders are created.

9. Now set the Read write permissions to this folder: chmod -R 777 /vmware

10. Once the above steps are complete, sync the latest changes by using the sync now option for replication and run the test recovery.