Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Bugs

Just before 2008 ends: Patches!

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Just before 2008 ends VMware released a bunch of patches for the 3.0.X release of VMware ESX. 9 Patches, all are “General” patches:

ESX303-200812401-BG: Virtual Machines Stop Responding When Disconnected from Serial Port
ESX303-200812402-BG: Fix for vdf -P Command to Delimit the Output Values With Proper Spacing
 ESX303-200812403-BG: Qlogic iSCSI Driver Allocates Target IDs Greater than 255
ESX303-200812404-BG: Permissions on the Service Console File System Change to Read-Only During Long NetApp Cluster Failover
ESX303-200812405-BG: CHAP Authentication Failure on ESX Server
 ESX303-200812406-BG: Fix for hostd RPM
 ESX303-200812407-BG: Required Patch for IBM FAStT Storage Arrays (DS3000, DS4000, DS5000 families) to Correct an Issue with Failover; Fix for a VMFS Filesystem Issue
ESX303-200812408-BG: QLogic Driver RPMs Versions Mismatch
 ESX303-200812409-BG: Hyperthreading Status Reported Incorrectly on Non-HT Multicore Processors for ESX Server 3.0.3

VM’s may unexpectedly reboot when using VMware HA with Virtual Machine Monitoring

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This KB article has just been published:

Virtual Machines may unexpectedly reboot after a VMotion migration to an ESX 3.5 Update 3 Host OR after a Power On operation on an ESX 3.5 Update 3 Host, when VMware HA feature with Virtual Machine Monitoring is active.

There’s a work around for the problem but I will not be posting them here cause they might change somewhere in time. Just read the KB article for more info on how to fix this issue.

VMware Workstation & Ubuntu ctrl-alt-ins not working?

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I just noticed that when running a VM on VMware Workstation 6.5 and Ubuntu 8.10(but this problem probably also occurs on other non-Windows OS’es), you can’t use the arrow keys. But also ctrl-alt-ins isn’t working, which is annoying cause you would have to do it with the mouse. And no arrow keys also means that you can’t browse through your command-line history in Windows or Linux for that matter. Luckily there are two work arounds:

  1. sudo gedit /etc/vmware/config
  3. If that doesn’t work try adding the following:
    xkeymap.keycode.108 = 0x138 # Alt_R
    xkeymap.keycode.106 = 0x135 # KP_Divide
    xkeymap.keycode.104 = 0x11c # KP_Enter
    xkeymap.keycode.111 = 0x148 # Up
    xkeymap.keycode.116 = 0x150 # Down
    xkeymap.keycode.113 = 0x14b # Left
    xkeymap.keycode.114 = 0x14d # Right
    xkeymap.keycode.105 = 0x11d # Control_R
    xkeymap.keycode.118 = 0x152 # Insert
    xkeymap.keycode.119 = 0x153 # Delete
    xkeymap.keycode.110 = 0x147 # Home
    xkeymap.keycode.115 = 0x14f # End
    xkeymap.keycode.112 = 0x149 # Prior
    xkeymap.keycode.117 = 0x151 # Next
    xkeymap.keycode.78 = 0x46 # Scroll_Lock
    xkeymap.keycode.127 = 0x100 # Pause
    xkeymap.keycode.133 = 0x15b # Meta_L
    xkeymap.keycode.134 = 0x15c # Meta_R
    xkeymap.keycode.135 = 0x15d # Menu

Thanks goes out to AlexPX and Johannes for pointing us out to this solution. There’s also a KB article on this one I just noticed.

Common VMware issues

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VMware Wolf is generating some awesome blogposts lately:

All the blog posts contain a downloadable html file with a grid. The grid contains problems followed by possible resolutions.

Great blog posts and very useful information, visit VMware Wolfs blog and download the files! Great stuff for your troubleshooting toolkit!

Dell Recovery CD fails to recover ESXi version 3.5

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I just noticed this new KB article that deals about not being able to upgrade ESXi on a Dell box because of the fact that the virtual media is attached:

Upgrade to ESXi 3.5 Update 2.
If you cannot upgrade to ESXi 3.5 Update 2, use the following workaround:

  1. Connect to the DRAC through ILO, as follows:
    1. Open the Media tab.
    2. Open the Configuration tab.
    3. Deselect the Attach virtual media check box.
  2. Boot the ESXi system from the recovery CD.
To use DRAC virtual media to perform the recovery, follow these steps:
  1. Attach the virtual media
  2. Using the virtual media, boot the machine.
  3. When the recovery CD is fully loaded, disconnect the virtual media and proceed with the recovery.

Which reminded of the nice I/O errors this Dell DRAC virtual media produces when attached. So be sure to detach the virtual media before you actually run ESX(i). Same goes for Fujitsu blades by the way, when a virtual media has been present it also produces these nice I/O errors:

Feb 12 09:16:47 esx1 kernel: SCSI device sdc: 2097151 512-byte hdwr sectors (1074 MB)
Feb 12 09:16:47 esx1 kernel: sdc: I/O error: dev 08:20, sector 0
Feb 12 09:16:47 esx1 kernel: I/O error: dev 08:20, sector 0
Feb 12 09:16:47 esx1 kernel: unable to read partition table

Which isn’t as bad as it seems, it’s just not able to read the partition. For Fujitsu blades the only workaround I’ve seen so far was to completely disable USB before booting.