Monday, October 14, 2013

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone Error - PEM_read_bio:no start line

I started my day off with a planning meeting to review a group presentation for the client's new CIO. You know, discussions about how much detail to go into with regard to the infrastructure, do we talk about SLAs, management type stuff. We were making great progress when suddenly, one of our help desk guys was lurking in the doorway with a worried look.

"A server just crashed."

No worries, I said. We'll sort it out. Turns out that one of the hard drives failed, but thankfully the RAID saved us (hey, that should be the name of a blog!). The server came back online, but with one failed drive. The hardware was an old Dell PE 1950 that was scheduled for p2v later this year. So we agreed to p2v that server tonight instead.

I fired up the VMware vCenter Standalone Converter, and made the classic mistake: not running it as administrator. Of course, this mistake isn't apparent until you click Finish after defining the conversion job. No worries, I thought. I'll just run it as admin and knock this out. But... no. Here's the error I got after defining a new conversion job:

[01880 error 'Default'] class Vmacore::Ssl::SSLException(SSL Exception: error:0906D06C:PEM routines:PEM_read_bio:no start line)

I checked that I had the correct permissions on the source server, and I did. Checked DNS settings on the source machine; they were correct. Then remembered that I had installed the converter agent during my first attempt to convert the VM, and did so with different AD credentials. This was the root of the problem.

The Fix

To resolve this problem, manually remove the Converter Agent from the source machine. Then you'll need to go back to the beginning of the conversion task wizard to install the agent again (use the back button so all of your values are not lost). Then run the conversion job and you'll be back in business.
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