I have installed VMware Server 2.0.2 on CentOS 5.5 and configured a regular (non-root) user account as the VMware administrator.
This works fine when using the web access interface, but the command line command "vmware-vim-cmd" cannot be used.
Ideally, the user managing this VMware installation should be able to use the command line interface without knowing the root password, just as with the web interface. I have already added it to the root group and changed the permissions of /etc/vmware/ssl/rui.key to allow reading by the root group. Now if the user tries to run vmware-vim-cmd, it fails with the error message:
[ts@imladris ~]$ vmware-vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms
Failed to login: FileIO error: Permission denied for file : /var/run/vmware-hostd-ticket/52cd87fc-69cd-7d02-eaf4-e314168e5111
Failed to login: vim.fault.InvalidLogin
The directory /var/run/vmware-hostd-ticket has very strange permissions: 705 = rwx---r-x, i.e. full access for user root, no access for group root, read access for everybody else. It reverts back to that setting on its own each time I set it to something more sane.
If I run vmware-vim-cmd as root, it fails with:
[root@imladris ~]# vmware-vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms
Failed to login: vim.fault.InvalidLogin
probably because root is not registered as a user in VMware.
Ideas?
