I've been making frequent use of Christophe's Guest Script Manager package (https://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-25474) over the last few months. All in all, I have seen tremendous benefit from it. I do however, seem to fall victim to several 'false positives' where GSM reports a script has run to success, yet, the observed result in the Guest VM is anything but.
The simplest example I can reproduce to date, is a batch script that creates 4 folders on 3 different drives that exist in a Windows Guest VM. The drives are visible to windows ~ the only thing the script does, is a batch 'mkdir' for 3 folders in the root of the drive, and one subfolder.
The script configuration has a 10 second timeout and a 10 second refresh, as these values *seemed* reasonable given the modest nature of the script. There is no context interactivity, no working directory, and no file copy in the script configuration.
Has anyone experienced something similar? I've tried to script in batch 'sleep' periods *just in case* a 'race' was to blame, but, no change. Any thoughts as to why such a simple script does not consistently demonstrate the expected result? Failure to yield the expected result with such a modest script is discouraging from trying larger, more complex scripts. Any feedback is appreciated!
BIG P.S. I just now tested some additional scenarios:
Creating 4 folders on the root of C:\ in the Windows Guest VM - only the first 2 out of the 4 folders created on the Windows Guest.
Jacked up the script timeout and refresh values to 90 seconds and 30 seconds (which I use successfully on longer running powershell scripts) - only the first 2 out of the 4 folders created on the Windows Guest.
'REM'med out the first 2 folder creates - the second 2 folders ARE NOT created in the Windows Guest. :-o
(In each case, the GSM 'Run script in VM guest' workflow runs to completion with Workflow Designer indicating a successful run)
Ran the second two folder creates manually from Windows Guest VM command line - the folders create as expected.
KRAEMS
vRO Appliance version: 7.1.0.19044 Build 4276164
Workflow Designer version: 7.1.0.4262825
Guest Script Manager version: 0.0.3a
Guest VM OS: Windows 2008 Standard R2 SP1