VMware UAG and the NO NETWORKING DETECTED error

On a recent project I had to deploy multiple VMware UAG’s for external access.

The UAGS are hosted at a cloud provider and the only access I had was the vCloud director.

So no PowerShell deployment or the default OVA deployment trough vCenter.

Unfortunately the deployment did not work, the backend team was not available at the time (bigger priorities and Ok fair enough Friday late in the afternoon) so no escape to a regular deployment and of course I gave myself a deadline for that day.. so the question arises…pop open a beer and give it day or can we fix this manually?

Ok so what happend? I created a new VAPP based on OVA, filled in the customizations and waited (a long… long time...)

Finally finished and then… the UAG comes up with a big red error:

NO NETWORKING DETECTED, PLEASE LOGIN AND RUN THE COMMAND /opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_config_net

Customization not executed? The strange thing is I could log in with the root account and the password entered in the customization, admin account is created etc. etc. so the customization is executed.. Of course I did a redeploy a couple of times but it keeps happening whatever I did.

Lets’ try the obvious…. The suggested command in the error! so logged with root

And entered the command:

/opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_config_net

The wizard shows up, let’s configure the IP address for eth0 so option 6 it is.

Another error:

[ERROR] failed to read network interface files for ‘eth0’

Ah that explains it so press ‘1’ to exit the wizard.

Let’s create the missing config file:

vi /etc/systemd/network/10-eth0.network

Don’t do anything in this file just press ESC

Type in :wq and press Enter to exit and save the file

Ok now we try the wizard again… enter the IP address, subnet mask etc etc

BAM next error…well multiple one’s

ERROR cannot run/sbin/ifup eth 0 command. Unknown error. return code: 256 Output: Make sure the interface is down or not assigned any UP

And:

Failed to restart system-networkd

In the end to keep this a blog and not a book, the fix to this one is to set the right permissions on the file we created earlier.

Exited the wizard again and typed this in the console:

chown systemd-network:systemd-network /etc/systemd/network/10-eth0.network

another attempt to run the wizard…. And… victory!

Don’t forget to set the gateway in option 2 and you’re good to go!

To summarize and don’t get all the errors when running the wizard a couple of frustrating times,

Type in command: "vi /etc/systemd/network/10-eth0.network"

Press Enter

Press Esc

Type in: ":wq"

Press Enter

Type in: "chown systemd-network:systemd-network /etc/systemd/network/10-eth0.network"

Press Enter

Type in: "/opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_config_net"

Press Enter

Follow the Wizard

A little remark, in this example this is a one arm deployment. Usually it is 2 or 3 arm so repeat for every interface and replace eth0 in every command for the interface you’re fixing. For example the second interface will be 10-eth1.network and so on

Hope this will save someone some frustration..

Since the OS is based on PhotonOS just like the vCenter appliance, vSphere Replication appliance and many more.. I can imagine this could happen there to and the solution might be the same!

Any question or remarks? Please let me know!