Error: "cp: cannot stat" and "No such file or directory" occurs during appliance backup

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

• When you run the appliance backup script /opt/vmware/appliance/bin/create-backup.sh in VMware Cloud Director(VCD), the process fails during the archiving phase. You observe the following errors in the command line output:
  
  /opt/vmware/appliance/bin/create-backup.sh
Invoking Backup utility ...
Using vcloud as default PG DB to backup
could not change directory to "/root": Permission denied
could not change directory to "/root": Permission denied
HTTP_CERT_FILE = /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/<filename>.cer
HTTP_KEY_FILE = /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/<filename>.pem
PGMI_CERT_FILE=/opt/vmware/appliance/etc/ssl/vcd_ova.crt
PGMI_KEY_FILE=/opt/vmware/appliance/etc/ssl/vcd_ova.key
Creating back up directory /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/backups/<backup-name-date>
Changing the permissions to 770 and ownership to vcloud user on /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/backups/<backup-name-date>
Saving metadata to /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/backups/<backup-name-date>/metadata.properties ...
Saving the vcloud DB user to /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/backups/<backup-name-date>/vcloud-user.sql...
Creating the vcloud DB backup at /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/backups/<backup-name-date>...
vcloud DB backup successfully created.
Archiving DB backup, primary node's properties files, certs, metadata ...
cp: cannot stat '/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/<filename>.pem': No such file or directory
Failed to take a backup of /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/<filename>.pem. Check if /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/<filename>.pem exists.
/opt/vmware/appliance/bin/create-backup.sh: line 137: [: -ne: unary operator expected
  
  
• While the PostgreSQL database backup might report success, the final backup bundle is not created

Environment

• VMware Cloud Director 10.6.1.1

Cause

This issue occurs due to a configuration mismatch in the responses.properties file located in the transfer directory. The backup script references /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/responses.properties to locate active certificate paths. If this file contains incorrect metadata or points to SSL certificates (example http.cer or http.pem) that are missing or invalid, the archiving process fails.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, you must replace the invalid responses.properties file with a known valid configuration.

1. Log in to the affected VMware Cloud Director appliance as root.
2. Navigate to the transfer data directory:
   
   cd /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/
   
   
3. Rename the invalid responses.properties file:
   
   mv responses.properties responses.properties.$(date +'%F_%H_%Z').backup
   
   
4. Copy a valid responses.properties from the local configuration directory:
   
   cp /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/responses.properties /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/responses.properties
   
   
5. Ensure the permissions and ownership are correct for the vcloud user:
   
   chown vcloud:vcloud /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/responses.properties
   
   
6. Re-run the backup script to verify the fix:
   
   /opt/vmware/appliance/bin/create-backup.sh

The backup should now complete successfully.