Extensive logging in vmware-vmsvc-root.log with open-vm-tools-11.0

This document (000004682) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 Service Pack 4 (SLES 12 SP4)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 Service Pack 5 (SLES 12 SP5)

Situation

System is a VMWware guest with open-vm-tools installed. The SCSI controller used is LSI Logic Parallel SCSI Controller
After updating the system to the latest patch level excessive logging in vmware-vmsvc-root.log is noted:

[2020-01-15T09:53:59.306Z] [ warning] [guestinfo] GuestInfoGetDiskDevice: Missing disk device name; VMDK mapping unavailable for "/", fsName: "/dev/sda2"
[2020-01-15T09:53:59.306Z] [ warning] [guestinfo] GuestInfoGetDiskDevice: Missing disk device name; VMDK mapping unavailable for "/boot/grub2/i386-pc", fsName: "/dev/sda2"
[2020-01-15T09:53:59.307Z] [ warning] [guestinfo] GuestInfoGetDiskDevice: Missing disk device name; VMDK mapping unavailable for "/.snapshots", fsName: "/dev/sda2"
[2020-01-15T09:53:59.307Z] [ warning] [guestinfo] GuestInfoGetDiskDevice: Missing disk device name; VMDK mapping unavailable for "/tmp", fsName: "/dev/sda2"
[2020-01-15T09:53:59.308Z] [ warning] [guestinfo] GuestInfoGetDiskDevice: Missing disk device name; VMDK mapping unavailable for "/home", fsName: "/dev/sda2"
[2020-01-15T09:53:59.308Z] [ warning] [guestinfo] GuestInfoGetDiskDevice: Missing disk device name; VMDK mapping unavailable for "/var/log", fsName: "/dev/sda2"
....

Resolution

SUSE engineering and VMware are aware of that and a maintenance update is in preparation already.

Any version later than: open-vm-tools-11.0.0-4.18.3 should come with a fix for that, also, open-vm-tools-10 is not affected.
This document will be updated accordingly once the update is released

Cause

The LSI Logic Parallel SCSI controller on PCI bus 0 is triggering this problem.
For this controller, no "label" file is created for the disk device in the /sys/class/block tree when the controller is on PCI bus 0.
This would also happen for the (deprecated) BusLogic SCSI controller. This is not the case for other supported controllers.

Additional Information

Note: This is just a warning and is not affecting system stability.
It just logs a big number of messages into /var/log/vmware-vmsvc-root.log

An immediate option would be to replace the LSI SCSI controller with the VMware Paravirtual controller.
With the SLES guest properly shutdown, edit the VM settings, expand "SCSI controller 0" and change the type (pull down menu) to VMware Paravirtual.
(Untested! May require to rebuild initrd using a rescue system)

Another option would be to set the default loglevel to "Info" in /etc/vmware-tools/tools.conf

[logging]
log.level=info

Requires restarting vmtoolsd.service!

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