vmtoolsd returns 'no value' when trying to read OVF env parms

Question

From within a linux VM, I'm trying to read the OVF environment parameters using this command:

# vmtoolsd --cmd 'info-get guestinfo.ovfEnv'
No value found

I did check that vmtoolsd service is running.

If I go to 'edit settings' for the VM, I can clearly see there does exist OVM env settings. So I would expect this command to work.

Anyone know why its not working? Or how to resolve?

Note: I'm running on a CentOS7 VM inside ESX 6.5 / vCenter 6.5.

Answer 1

I found that power-off and power-on off the Guest VM fixes the issue. I now get the OVF env parms in the output of the command:

# vmtoolsd --cmd 'info-get guestinfo.ovfEnv'
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Environment
     xmlns="http://schemas.dmtf.org/ovf/environment/1"
     xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
     xmlns:oe="http://schemas.dmtf.org/ovf/environment/1"
     xmlns:ve="http://www.vmware.com/schema/ovfenv"
     oe:id=""
     ve:vCenterId="vm-186">
<PlatformSection>
  <Kind>VMware ESXi</Kind>
  <Version>6.5.0</Version>
  <Vendor>VMware, Inc.</Vendor>
  <Locale>en</Locale>
</PlatformSection>    
...

NOTE: "Restart Guest OS" did NOT help, only power off/on.

Possibly someone else can help explain why the command didn't work in the first place, and/or a better recovery from within the guest VM.