[Bug 227906] emulators/open-vm-tools: vmguestd stops communicating with host randomly

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https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=227906

            Bug ID: 227906
           Summary: emulators/open-vm-tools: vmguestd stops communicating
                    with host randomly
           Product: Ports & Packages
           Version: Latest
          Hardware: Any
                OS: Any
            Status: New
          Severity: Affects Only Me
          Priority: ---
         Component: Individual Port(s)
          Assignee: jpaetzel at FreeBSD.org
          Reporter: prj at rootwyrm.com
          Assignee: jpaetzel at FreeBSD.org
             Flags: maintainer-feedback?(jpaetzel at FreeBSD.org)

Separate bug requested by John Wolfe. This build does not appear to fully
address a repeating issue I have been running into. No error is reported by
host or guest, but guestd appears to stop communicating, resulting in the
classic 'VMware Tools Not Installed' message in vCenter. There isn't any clear
trigger, and restarting guestd seems to fix it. 

Reproduces on three guests now, with the hosts running 6.5.0 7388607. This
problem began with open-vm-tools-nox11-10.2.0 from portsnap and SVN, packages
built on my in-house poudriere cluster and straight from ports. Since no clear
trigger has been found, it's VERY difficult to test port-build vs poudriere
built package, but it has reproduced with both. Versions prior to 10.2.0 did
not exhibit this behavior.

This has occurred from about FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE through -p11, exclusive to
amd64 guests (I have not been able to reproduce on i386.) I had hoped to
possibly find a commonality between guests such as high VMDK count or frequent
normal high CPU or RAM, but no such luck. It shows up on 1vC/1GB/2 VMDK as well
as 4vC/4GB/10 VMDK. 

In all guests, bouncing vmguestd with /usr/local/etc/rc.d/vmware-guestd restart
will resolve it temporarily. Sometimes vmware-kmod also needs a restart, even
though kernel modules are already loaded. 10.2.5 does seem to resolve it a bit
longer - about 24-36 hours - but 10.2.0_2,2 will lose communications again
usually after a few hours (generally less than 4.) 

All guests are using the same boot start in rc.conf:
vmware_guest_vmblock_enable="YES"
vmware_guest_vmhgfs_enable="YES"
vmware_guest_vmmemctl_enable="YES"
vmware_guest_vmxnet_enable="YES"
vmware_guestd_enable="YES"

This does also occur with both open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools-nox11 so it's
not related to any X components. Since there's no clear trigger and I can't
reproduce at will, this has proven extremely difficult to debug. There are no
indications of problems on either guest or host side in the logs either. It
just stops communicating.

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