I dug all around in Vim.pm and their appears to be no easy way to simply "insert %5c vs %5C." from within that file. When the command is issued each part of it is derived in different places, its not a simple insert as far as I can tell.
(Is there a place that you suggest would replace part of the code with a hard coded address - I may do that next)
SO, I tried two things:
1) I tried in the "build" section of the vmware studio tool to set up my login "domain/user" to be "domain%5C" and "domain%5c" - neither of these worked at all-- even though URL encodings were used in a different part of the build page and inserted there by the "wizard". I think these are legal URL and recognized regardless.. though.. why does it not? recognize these? It puts them in itself..
2) I found the Admin and she nicely consented to run all my stuff as root, so now with super powers
I ran this and got this message:
I think there is a bug in here somewhere. What next?
03/09/2013 14:31:46 [info] Transporting VM from Studio to provisioning host; this may take a few minutes...
03/09/2013 14:31:46 [dbug] Transporting VM between vCenter and Studio via ovftool.
03/09/2013 14:31:46 [dbug]
03/09/2013 14:31:46 [dbug] Input Command: </opt/vmware/share/ovftool/ovftool --acceptAllEulas '--
name=192.68.61.207_Courage.5' '--datastore=san-core8' '--network=V Network' '--diskMode=thin'
'/opt/vmware/www/build/Courage.5/va/SUPERHERO.vmx' 'vi://domain%5CRootusername@ourcompany.com:443/NA
Core QA/host/Core cluster/'>
03/09/2013 14:31:46 [dbug] Expect wait-time: <60> max-time: <7200>
03/09/2013 14:31:46 [dbug] Command to spawn: <rm -f /tmp/1kb8CG7D2R; /opt/vmware/share/ovftool/ovftool --
acceptAllEulas '--name=192.68.61.207_Courage.5' '--datastore=san-core8' '--network=V Network' '--diskMode=thin'
'/opt/vmware/www/build/Courage.5/va/SUPERHERO.vmx' 'vi://domain%5CRootusername@ourcompany.com:443/NA
Core QA/host/Core cluster/' 2>&1; echo $? > /tmp/1kb8CG7D2R>
03/09/2013 14:31:50 [dbug] Expected times of asking passwords: 1
03/09/2013 14:31:50 [dbug] Command stdout: <************
Error: Curl error: URL using bad/illegal format or missing URL
Completed with errors