The lookups in esx_vi work a bit differently that we are used to.  The filters (travelsalSpec and selectSet) choose how to look up the objects, but given a root object the lookup lists all the objects of a requested type inside it as well as the root object itself.  We then go through the results and find the one which has the same name as was requested.  However in a case with nested folders of a same name this could break when the first returned object in the list is the parent folder as we'd select it only based on the name.  To avoid this also add a check that the candidate we are trying to pick is not exactly the same object (reference) as the root object. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1643868 Signed-off-by: Martin Kletzander <mkletzan(a)redhat.com&gt; ---  src/esx/esx_vi.c | 5 +++++  1 file changed, 5 insertions(+) diff --git a/src/esx/esx_vi.c b/src/esx/esx_vi.c index 6f964cc470d1..80ed6199e3ac 100644 --- a/src/esx/esx_vi.c +++ b/src/esx/esx_vi.c @@ -4973,6 +4973,11 @@ esxVI_LookupManagedObjectHelper(esxVI_Context *ctx,               candidate = candidate->_next) {              name_candidate = NULL;   +            if (candidate->obj->_type == root->_type && +                g_strcmp0(candidate->obj->type, root->type) == 0 && +                g_strcmp0(candidate->obj->value, root->value) == 0) +                continue; +              if (esxVI_GetStringValue(candidate, "name", &name_candidate,                                       esxVI_Occurrence_RequiredItem) < 0) {                  goto cleanup;