Determining if the xinetd service is running on an ESX host

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

In some cases the vmware-vmkauthd daemon may have stopped responding. This prevents the required authentication from taking place when adding an ESX host to inventory.

This article provides steps to assist you in determining the current state of the xinetd daemon (which manages vmware-vmkauthd) and steps to start the service if it is not running.

Symptoms:

• You are unable to add and connect an ESX host to VirtualCenter/vCenter Server inventory
  
  Cannot contact the specified host (10.145.210.51). The host may not be available on the network, a network configuration problem may exist, or the management services configuration problem may exist on this host may not be responding.
  
  
• The VMware Infrastructure/vSphere Client connection directly to an ESX host works
  
  
• This error is generated in vCenter Server:
  
  
  Failed to connect to host
  
  
• In the hostd.log you see errors similar to:
  
  F6400B90 warning 'Proxysvc Req00023'] Connection to localhost:8089 failed with error N7Vmacore15SystemExceptionE(Connection refused).
  
  
  
  

Environment

VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware VirtualCenter 2.5.x
VMware ESX Server 3.5.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x

Resolution

To determine the state and start the xinetd service:

1. Log into the ESX host using an SSH client. For more information, see Opening a command or shell prompt (1003892).
   
   
2. Run the following command to verify that the xinetd service is running:
   
   # service xinetd status
   
   
3. If it is not running, xinetd is stopped will be returned. Issue the following xinetd start command:
   
   # service xinetd start
   
   
4. Run service xinetd status again to verify the service is now running. If successful, you will see:
   
   xinetd (pid number) is running...
   

Additional Information

Opening a command or shell prompt