This article is following-up on my previous post regarding VMware web access and LDAP authentication. A few days later and I found myself in a  pickle. It turns out that the permissions that I had setup were somehow removed from the VM console. This meant that all users authenticating against LDAP were unable to log-in.

I said "no problem", I'll just add the permission back in there. I followed the same steps from my previous post and I ran into an error. I like to see what's going on in the background, so I tail /var/log/vmware/hostd.log recursively while I perform the tasks on the web console. The following error (s) were coming up in the log:

[2009-06-01 17:23:39.559 'TaskManager' 1096079680 info] Task Created : haTask--vim.AuthorizationManager.setEntityPermissions-148278022
[2009-06-01 17:23:39.559 'PropertyProvider' 1096079680 verbose] RecordOp ADD: recentTask["haTask--vim.AuthorizationManager.setEntityPermissions-148278022"], ha-taskmgr
[2009-06-01 17:23:39.586 'TaskManager' 1096079680 info] Task Completed : haTask--vim.AuthorizationManager.setEntityPermissions-148278022
[2009-06-01 17:23:39.586 'PropertyProvider' 1096079680 verbose] RecordOp ASSIGN: info, haTask--vim.AuthorizationManager.setEntityPermissions-148278022
[2009-06-01 17:23:39.586 'Vmomi' 1096079680 info] Activation [N5Vmomi10ActivationE:0x93dba40] : Invoke done [setEntityPermissions] on [vim.AuthorizationManager:ha-authmgr]
[2009-06-01 17:23:39.586 'Vmomi' 1096079680 info] Throw vim.fault.DatabaseError
[2009-06-01 17:23:39.586 'Vmomi' 1096079680 info] Result:
(vim.fault.DatabaseError) {
dynamicType = <unset>,
msg = ""

So, I a little bit of research lead to the following solution. Pause all VM guests, then edit the file /etc/vmware/hostd/authorization.xml and modify the value of the following line:

<NextAceId>11</NextAceId>

Change it to 12, save the file and restart the vmware service. Once this has been done, go back in the VM console and add the permission in there. Be sure to force the permission to the child objects as well.

Problem solved, and we all live to see another fun filled VMware day!