Starting vmtoolsd as a service on Red Hat / CentOS

If you're like me;  you may manage virtual servers within vSphere.. Linux ones.  Red Hat ones, in particular, but this applies to CentOS as well.

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away, the vmware-tools setup procedure installed the necessary init script for you.  Lately though, for new images that I've been building - those init scripts aren't getting installed by the vmware tools installation package.  So they don't start up on reboot.  VMware based backups failed; clock were going askew, you name it.   I need that daemon started on reboot.

Without a SysV init script handy, I had to roll my own.. and this is the result;  despite having worked with Linux for well over 15 years, setting up SysV init scripts remain somewhat of a black art.  The ones on our older system were more complicated than we needed.  I was aiming for something simpler and portable.

With RHEL 7, the rumor mills are abuzz with systemd so that may change. But, I'm a practical system administrator, and it isn't here yet...  Yet.

Anyways, here it is;  place this script @ /etc/rc.d/init.d as 'vmtoolsd' then run `chkconfig vmtoolsd on` and `service vmtoolsd start` (if you change the script name, then change chkconfig and service commands accordingly):

#!/bin/bash
#
#   vmtoolsd          Start/stop the vmware tools daemon
#
# chkconfig:  2345 90 60
# description: vmtoolsd is a daemon that starts up.  for some reason, it
#              doesn't include a sysv init startup file in the latest release.
#              so i have to write this
#

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: vmtoolsd
# Required-Start: $local_fs $syslog
# Required-Stop: $local_fs $syslog
# Default-Start: 2345
# Default-Stop: 90
# Short-Description: Run vmware tools daemon
# Description:  Yadda yadda.
### END INIT INFO

RETVAL=0
prog="vmtoolsd"
exec="/usr/sbin/vmtoolsd"
lockfile="/var/lock/subsys/vmtoolsd"

# Source function library
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

start() {
    # Ensure no one has access
    if [ $UID -ne 0 ]; then
        echo "User has insufficient privileges."
        exit 4
    fi

    [ -x $exec ] || exit 5

    echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
    daemon $prog --background=/var/run/vmtoolsd.pid
    retval=$?
    echo
    [ $retval -eq 0 ] && touch $lockfile

}

stop() {
    if [ $UID -ne 0 ]; then
        echo "User has insufficient privileges."
        exit 4
    fi

    echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
    if [ -n "`pidfileofproc $exec`" ]; then
        killproc $exec
        RETVAL=3
    else
        failure $"Stopping $prog"
    fi
    retval=$?
    echo
    [ $retval -eq 0 ] && rm -f $lockfile
}

restart() {
    stop
    start
}

reload() {
    echo -n $"Reloading $prog: "
    if [ -n "`pidfileofproc $exec`" ]; then
        killproc $exec -HUP
    else
        failure $"Reloading $prog"
    fi
    retval=$?
    echo
}

rh_status() {
    status -p /var/run/vmtoolsd.pid $prog
}

rh_status_q() {
    rh_status >/dev/null 2>&1
}



case "$1" in
    start)
        rh_status_q && exit 0
        $1
        ;;
    stop)
        rh_status_q || exit 0
        $1
        ;;
    restart)
        $1
        ;;
    status)
        rh_status
        ;;
    *)
        echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|status}"
        exit 2
esac
exit $?