Shutting down VMWare clients

In /etc/services on CLIENT:

# Local services
shutdown 6666/tcp

In /etc/inetd.conf on CLIENT:

shutdown stream tcp nowait root /sbin/shutnow

In /sbin/shutnow of CLIENT: (you can prolly get rid of this and move this all into inetd.conf above, but I used to do other things too…)

#!/bin/bash
/sbin/shutdown -h now

On the CLIENT's iptables rules, I have:

0 0 DROP tcp -- eth1 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:6666

So nobody can reach that port from eth1 (internet). The host will be hitting the port on eth2 which is the host-only virtual network.

Then on the HOST in /etc/init.d/kill_vms (new file):

#!/bin/sh
#
# chkconfig: 4 90 08
# description: Kills VMs on shutdown/reboot
/usr/bin/telnet 192.168.90.201 6666 < /dev/zero
PIDS=fake
while [ "foo$PIDS" != "foo" ]
do {
echo "Delaying shutdown... VMWare still on $PIDS"
sleep 10
PIDS=`pidof vmware-vmx`
};
done

So then on the server you install the "kill_vms" with chkconfig (fix the IP from 192.168.90.201 to your virtual client IP of course!).

It won't work the first time you reboot, sorry. If you 'touch' the file /var/lock/subsys/kill_vms (at least on my ancient RH based system) then it should. Also, it will hang forever if you don't have the virtual machine set to 'Close on shutdown' and I think maybe another option in VMWare about closing if all clients close.