centreon_vmware service fails to start after mid-December update – engine-context.json empty

We are facing an issue with the centreon_vmware process that started after a Centreon update applied in mid-December.

Issue description

The centreon_vmware service fails to start with the following error:

# systemctl status centreon_vmware.service
centreon_vmware.service - Centreon VMWare
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/centreon_vmware.service; enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code)
Process: ExecStart=/usr/bin/perl /usr/bin/centreon_vmware.pl $OPTIONS
Status: 255/EXCEPTION

Can't use string ("Could not decode JSON from ''...") as a HASH ref
at /usr/share/perl5/centreon/script/credentialsencryption.pm line 55.

Logs

The centreon_vmware.log shows the following messages:

No vault config file given. Applying default: /var/lib/centreon/vault/vault.json
No Engine context config file given. Applying default: /etc/centreon-engine/engine-context.json
The given configuration file /var/lib/centreon/vault/vault.json does not exist.
Something happened during init() method that makes Centreonvault not usable.
Reading Engine context configuration from file /etc/centreon-engine/engine-context.json

Root cause identified

We found that the file:

/etc/centreon-engine/engine-context.json

was empty.

After manually editing it and adding minimal valid JSON content:

{}

the centreon_vmware service started successfully and is now running normally.

Questions

However, this file:

• Does not seem to be deployed during poller configuration deployment

• Was empty after the update

We would like to understand:

1. Where does engine-context.json come from originally?

2. What is the expected/default content of this file?

3. Is it normal that this file is not deployed or regenerated during poller configuration deployment?

4. Could this be related to the update applied in mid-December?

Thank you in advance for your help and clarification.