VCSA 6.5 A problem occurred while reading the OVF file / Error: ovftool is not available on Mac
So today I spent sometime updating and rebuilding my lab so I could write some further articles. It appears one of the versions that you may well have downloaded of the VCSA ISO has a small bug. My version of the ISO was called VMware-VCSA-all-6.5.0-4602587.iso but it may well have been fixed now otherwise you get the following error whilst trying to install the VCSA appliance from the Mac GUI.
A problem occurred while reading the OVF file.: Error: ovftool is not available
I must say a massive thanks to David Stamen on the vExpert Slack for finding a fix for this and pointing me in the right direction. I believe Emad Younis is also aware of the issue and will be looking into this. I did see his post about it only hitting macOS Sierra 10.12.1 but I am still on 10.12 (10.12 Beta (16A312a)) and I still get the error. I thought another person putting something up about it would be good as I got nothing from Google at the time of writing this article.
It appears to be down to how the OS now prepares certain things. I didn’t have time to test this on my older Mac as the workaround is fairly easy anyway. Much better than me scrabbling round and installing the OVF tool and scratching my head wondering why it still doesn’t work.
The trick is to save the error log from the above window and herein lies the answer to getting it to work. Again I haven’t got another machine at this OS level to test so I am making an assumption that the path may differ in each persons profile and/or machine.
If you scroll to the end of the log you will see a very interesting path. Copy this out and open the location from Go to folder… action from within finder (CMD+Shift+G).
Inside this folder copy the whole VCSA folder from the ISO and relaunch the VCSA GUI. It did find you could select back and next and it would work but better to be safe. You will now see that this can read the OVF and all the items get populated as expected. I have also been advised to copy out the whole ISO to a temporary folder and run the GUI from here to get best results.
5 Comments
Scott McAdara
Worked perfectly! Thank you.
Shahnawaz
can u pls help to find that path for me, i m not able to find the path in my system.
Shahnawaz
i have gone through the logs but unable to find the path in logs, here i have pasted the logs,
2017-12-26T20:29:15.676Z – info: LogLevel: debug
2017-12-26T20:29:15.746Z – info: Underlying platform for the OS is: win32
2017-12-26T20:29:15.746Z – info: Number of cpus is: 1
2017-12-26T20:29:15.746Z – info: Speed of cpus is: 2594
2017-12-26T20:29:15.750Z – info: RAM is: 2 GB
2017-12-26T20:29:15.752Z – debug: wizardTitle: {WORKFLOW_NAME} – Stage 1: Deploy appliance
2017-12-26T20:29:19.382Z – debug: wizardTitle: Install – Stage 1: Deploy appliance
2017-12-26T20:29:19.403Z – info: Feature switch VUMUpgradeEnabled: true
2017-12-26T20:29:36.570Z – debug: eulaTxtUrl: eula_en.html
2017-12-26T20:29:39.711Z – debug: wizardTitle: Install – Stage 1: Deploy appliance
2017-12-26T20:30:07.556Z – debug: nodeType: embedded
2017-12-26T20:30:07.556Z – debug: wizardTitle: Install – Stage 1: Deploy vCenter Server with an Embedded Platform Services Controller
2017-12-26T20:30:21.824Z – debug: Target IP address in DOM input value is: 192.168.1.145
2017-12-26T20:30:21.824Z – debug: Target IP Value in data model is: 192.168.1.145
2017-12-26T20:30:21.824Z – debug: Target IP Value in data model after correction is: 192.168.1.145
2017-12-26T20:30:31.794Z – debug: Target IP address in DOM input value is: 192.168.1.145
2017-12-26T20:30:31.794Z – debug: Target IP Value in data model is: 192.168.1.145
2017-12-26T20:30:31.794Z – debug: Target IP Value in data model after correction is: 192.168.1.145
2017-12-26T20:31:00.004Z – debug: ip address in data model on leaving page is: 192.168.1.145
2017-12-26T20:31:02.165Z – error: Could not get certificate fingerprint from host, 192.168.1.145: Error: connect ECONNREFUSED 192.168.1.145:443
Actually the logs are not generatin, last updates is 26th Dec and i am working today as well.
Can u pls help me to find the logs
Shahnawaz
please let me know from below logs where i should paste the contents of VSCA iso contents, below are the logs,
2017-12-29T00:10:35.843Z – info: ESXi hostCheck was successful
2017-12-29T00:10:50.142Z – info: vmName: VMware vCenter Server Appliance
2017-12-29T00:10:50.212Z – debug: token:undefined, length:1, running total:1
2017-12-29T00:10:50.212Z – info: number of vms with name, VMware vCenter Server Appliance: 0
2017-12-29T00:10:50.249Z – debug: Deployment size page description: Select the deployment size for this vCenter Server with an Embedded Platform Services Controller.
2017-12-29T00:10:50.250Z – debug: scope.backupProfileDataArr: undefined
2017-12-29T00:10:50.252Z – info: ovftoolCmd: C:\Windows\Temp\vcsa\ovftool\win32\ovftool.exe
2017-12-29T00:10:50.252Z – debug: ovaFileNameRe: /^VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-.*_OVF10.ova$/
2017-12-29T00:10:50.253Z – debug: files in C:\Windows\Temp\vcsa: ovftool,version.txt,VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-6.5.0.5100-7070488_OVF10.ova
2017-12-29T00:10:50.254Z – info: ovaFile: C:\Windows\Temp\vcsa\VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-6.5.0.5100-7070488_OVF10.ova
2017-12-29T00:10:50.419Z – info: probeOvf exited with status null
2017-12-29T00:10:50.436Z – error: probeOvf null status, signal: null, error: { Error: spawnSync C:\Windows\Temp\vcsa\ovftool\win32\ovftool.exe UNKNOWN
at exports._errnoException (util.js:1008:11)
at spawnSync (child_process.js:465:20)
at Object.probeOvf (file:///C:/Windows/Temp/vcsa-ui-installer/win32/resources/app/services/ovfProbeService.js:60:28)
at getProfileLayoutData (file:///C:/Windows/Temp/vcsa-ui-installer/win32/resources/app/controllers/selectSizeController.js:182:45)
at new (file:///C:/Windows/Temp/vcsa-ui-installer/win32/resources/app/controllers/selectSizeController.js:683:7)
at Object.invoke (file:///C:/Windows/Temp/vcsa-ui-installer/win32/resources/app/bower_components/angular/angular.js:4560:17)
at extend.instance (file:///C:/Windows/Temp/vcsa-ui-installer/win32/resources/app/bower_components/angular/angular.js:9425:34)
at nodeLinkFn (file:///C:/Windows/Temp/vcsa-ui-installer/win32/resources/app/bower_components/angular/angular.js:8530:34)
at compositeLinkFn (file:///C:/Windows/Temp/vcsa-ui-installer/win32/resources/app/bower_components/angular/angular.js:7965:13)
at publicLinkFn (file:///C:/Windows/Temp/vcsa-ui-installer/win32/resources/app/bower_components/angular/angular.js:7845:30)
code: ‘UNKNOWN’,
errno: ‘UNKNOWN’,
syscall: ‘spawnSync C:\\Windows\\Temp\\vcsa\\ovftool\\win32\\ovftool.exe’,
path: ‘C:\\Windows\\Temp\\vcsa\\ovftool\\win32\\ovftool.exe’,
spawnargs:
[ ‘–machineOutput’,
‘–sourceType=ova’,
‘C:\\Windows\\Temp\\vcsa\\VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-6.5.0.5100-7070488_OVF10.ova’ ] }
2017-12-29T00:10:50.438Z – error: OVF probe error: Error: ovftool exited unexpectedly
Linson Antony
Thank you so much. It really helped and solved the issue.