Knowledge Base

Symptoms

The following symptoms might be seen in systems without this patch:

• Invalid frame size might cause the ESX Server host to crash when, while using a vmxnet virtual adapter, VLAN tagging and/or priority queue tagging is enabled.
• During VMware VMotion, the source or destination server participating in the VMotion becomes unresponsive, when the IP address of the vmkernel port participating in VMotion is a duplicate on the network.
• Packet duplication causes network congestion. Duplication of packets might also cause issues with VMotion RARP broadcast. To confirm if packets are getting duplicated, use a network tool such as ARPing to send broadcast/multicast packets. Check the destination virtual machine using a network traffic analyzer such as tcpdump or Ethereal.

Impact

This patch resolves the symptoms discussed above and improves patch management activities on all ESX Server hosts. Command line usage of the tool has not changed, but custom scripts and third-party utilities could be affected by these changes.

Download Instructions

Download and verify the patch bundle as follows:

1. Download patch ESX-1000078 by clicking on the link above.
2. Log in to the ESX Server service console as root.

3. Create a local depot directory.

   # mkdir -p /var/updates

   Note: VMware recommends that you use the updates directory.

4. Change your working directory to /var/updates.

   # cd /var/updates

5. Download the tar file into the /var/updates directory.

6. Verify the integrity of the downloaded tar file:

   # md5sum ESX-1000078.tgz
   
   The md5 checksum output should match the following:
   
   ab53262e1e18abec12a6242093c31de5 ESX-1000078.tgz
   
   

7. Extract the compressed tar archive:

   # tar -xvzf ESX-1000078.tgz

8. Change to the newly created directory, /var/updates/ESX-1000078:

   # cd ESX-1000078

Installation Instructions

Note: All virtual machines on the host must be either shut down or migrated using VMotion before applying the patch. A reboot of the ESX Server host is required after applying this patch.

After you have downloaded and extracted the archive, and if you are in the directory you created above, install the update using the following command:

# esxupdate update

If you want to run esxupdate from a different directory, you must specify the bundle path in the command:

# esxupdate -r file://<directory>/ESX-1000078 update

For example, if the host is called depot:

# esxupdate -r file:///depot/var/updates/ESX-1000078 update

During the update process, logs appear on the terminal. You can specify the verbosity of esxupdate logs by using the -v option as shown below.

# esxupdate -v 10 file://<directory>/ESX-1000078 update

For more information on using esxupdate, refer to the Patch Management for ESX Server 3 tech note at http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx3_esxupdate.pdf.