Build VMs stopped starting after a reboot into a new kernel: vmmon/vmnet
were left unloaded and vmnet1/vmnet8 (DHCP/NAT) never came up, so
vmware-vmx died (status=237/KEYRING) and clones got no IP. Root cause:
the LSB->systemd sysv-generated vmware.service intermittently fails to
generate at early boot ("systemd-sysv-generator: Cannot find unit
vmware.service"), and the existing module-rebuild guard only builds the
modules -- it never loads them or starts vmnet networking.
Add a native vmware-host.service that runs `/etc/init.d/vmware start`
(loads vmmon/vmci + brings up vmnet), ordered after the rebuild guard,
and mask the flaky sysv vmware.service so the native unit is the sole
owner. Provisioned by scripts/install-vmware-host-services.sh and wired
into setup-host-linux.sh (new step 8/9). VMware ships no native unit and
no kernel postinst hook, so this native wrapper around VMware's own
tools is the reliable boot path.
Verified: linked clone boots and gets a vmnet8 DHCP IP.
- Add `retention run` command (ports Invoke-RetentionPolicy.ps1): purges
old artifact/log dirs with aggressive mode when disk space is low.
- Add `template backup` command (ports Backup-CITemplate.ps1): 7z -mx=1
compressed archives in /var/lib/ci/backups/, prunes to keep-count=3,
stops/restarts act-runner.service around the copy.
- Update ci-retention-policy.service and ci-backup-template.service to use
Python; pwsh is no longer required on the Linux host.
- Fix ci-watch-runner-health.service: pass --service-name act-runner
(Linux service name, not Windows act_runner default).
- Fix _list_orphans in vm.py: wrap is_dir() inside the OSError try block
so a stat() failure on an entry is silently skipped rather than raised.
- Mark B5 complete in PhaseB-user-checklist.md.
Simone