vmware-cmd fails

i moved a virtual machine from one host to another today and since it resided on local storage, i used our trusty vRanger to back it up to the new machine and then restore it. Once there, all i should have had to do was run the following command:

vmware-cmd -s register vmfs/volume///.vmx

however, when i did this, the command failed complaining about Perl

i then tried to run the configuration for perl using the following command

vmware-config.pl

but this errored out as well. found that there are issues with the vmware-config.pl command when the ESX server's time is considerably at odds with the actual time. This was the case for me as i had just installed this host.

1. i reset the time to the current value
2. re-ran vmware-config.pl (success this time)
3. re-ran vmware-cmd -s register vmfs/volume///.vmx (success)

Moral of the story - if you get strange errors with perl, make sure your host time is correct...