patches

Patches for ESX 3.5 and 3i

Duncan Epping · Jan 18, 2008 ·

VMware just released 9 patches for ESX 3.5 and 1 for ESX 3i! You can download them here for 3.5 and here for 3i.

The patch for ESX 3i fixes the following:

ESX Server 3i hosts using more than two processor sockets cannot be licensed when using host-based licensing.

VMware Virtual Center does not properly record the number of processors on Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor 7200 series based hosts.

An issue with the BCM5709 firmware where ping requests sometimes fail after loading and unloading the bnx2 driver.

An issue with the bnx2 driver where a device using the bnx2 driver fails to connect to the a 100 Mbps network during the network autonegotiation period after system boot.

The patches for ESX 3.5 contain the following:

Update to the bnx2 Driver

Security Update to the Samba Package

Security Update to the util-linux Package

Security Update to the Perl Package

Security Update to the openssl Package

Daylight Saving Time Update

vmkernel-vmnix Update for the bnx2 Driver

Intel Xeon Processor 7200 Series Based Servers Licensing Issues

Multi-processor Licensing Issues, VMotion Assert Failure

I’m glad VMware released this fixes, now I can finally test the Update Manager for my ESX Hosts.

On the VMTN forum I read a cool solution for clearing your update cache when you use a web repository for patching your ESX hosts: “yum clean all”. Never thought of that cause I hardly use a web repository, always use a VMFS volume and the vmprofessional script.

Starting a VM after applying 15 November and up patches on 3.0.2

Duncan Epping · Dec 20, 2007 ·

When patching ESX Hosts with iSCSI attached SAN’s it’s possible you encounter the following event when starting a VM:

“A general system error occured: The system returned an error. Communication with the virtual machine may have been interrupted.”

This is caused by the fact that the “Software iSCSI Client” isn’t enabled on the ESX firewall. November the 15th VMware released a couple of patches which addressed a bug. This bug made it possible to connect via the iSCSI software initiator without enabling the service on the ESX firewall. To open up the port open a console session to the ESX host and type “esxcfg-firewall -e swISCSIClient” or enable it via VirtualCenter “Configuration -> Security Profile -> Properties -> Check Software iSCSI Client”.