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Knowledge Base

Attaching a Host Profile fails with error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object (1038260)

Last Updated: 8/31/2015Categories: TroubleshootingTotal Views: 11342Language:
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Symptoms

Attaching a Host Profile to an object such as an ESX host using the vSphere Client to the vCenter Server fails

You see the error:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object

In the %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs\vpxd.log file of vCenter Server, you see entries similar to:

vim.profile.host.HostProfile.update: vmodl.fault.SystemError:
Result:
(vmodl.fault.SystemError) {
dynamicType = <unset>,
faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
reason = "Runtime fault",
msg = "ascii"

On the vCenter Server, the PyVmomiServer.log (%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\PyVmomiServer.log) contains the entry:

[2011-03-10 18:53:06,724 root ERROR] ascii
[2011-03-10 18:53:06,724 root ERROR] Traceback (most recent call last):
File "SoapHandler.pyc", line 1032, in _HandleRequest
File "SoapHandler.pyc", line 1047, in _DeserializeMessage
File "SoapHandler.pyc", line 727, in Parse
File "XMLExpatHelper.pyc", line 114, in _EndElementHandler
File "SoapHandler.pyc", line 384, in EndElementHandler
File "pyVmomi\SoapAdapter.pyc", line 294, in EndElementHandler
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xdc' in position 52: ordinal not in range(128)

Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

Cause

The issue occurs because the host profile engine fails to encode a character using ASCII code.

To verify this issue, examine the vpxd logs and search for references to unusual language characters.

For example:

key-vim-profile-host-DvsServiceConsoleVNicProfile-GRÃœN-VMKWARTUNG

key-vim-profile-host-PnicUplinkProfile-vmnic2-GR ÃœN-DVUplinks-23-dvUplink1

Note: Ãœ is the result of trying to encode the Ü utf-8 character using ASCII code.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, look for special language characters in the vSphere environment and change the name to use a standard character.

In the above example, a Ü character was used in the name of a vDS switch. If you change the Ü to a standard character such as U, the issue is resolved.

Related Information

For related information, see Troubleshooting errors resulting from non-ASCII names (1003866).

Troubleshooting errors resulting from non-ASCII names

Detectable by VMware SkylineTM

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End Of General Availability of the Free vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi 7.x and 8.x) (2107518)

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