When Using Serial Ports That Are Connected to Named Pipes, You Cannot Use Relative Paths and Locations on VMFS

The serial port editor lets you browse datastores to select a location for your named pipes to be placed and lets you type a relative path in the text box for named pipes. Typing a relative path in the text box implicitly places the named pipe on the datastore where the virtual machine resides.

VMFS does not support named pipes. Therefore, if the datastore is a VMFS volume, the serial port does not function properly. For NFS datastores, the serial port functions properly.

To solve this problem, directly modify the configuration file for the virtual machine to locate the named pipe on the console file system:

1. Locate the following entry in the configuration file:
   serial0.fileName = "<>"
2. Change the value of <>.
3. Unregister and reregister the virtual machine so that the changes are noticed.