ESX Server 3.0.2, Patch ESX-1002430; Updates to VMware Tools; Fixes For Installing vmxnet Correctly, Compilation Failure With GuestSDK Header Files

Symptoms

• vmxnet driver is the default network driver that is installed with VMware Tools. However, after installing VMware Tools and restarting the virtual machine, checking the network driver by using lsmod might display pcnet32 or vlance driver as the default driver. Further, using lsmod might display vmxnet as unused:
  
  [root@ root] # lsmod
  Module Size Used by Tainted: PF
  
  vmxnet 9836 0 (unused)
  vmmemctl 8204 0 (unused)
  udf 97408 0 (autoclean)
  
  

• Compilation failure when including GuestSDK header files might occur in the following scenario:
  
  1. Create a 64-bit Windows virtual machine (win2k3e).
  2. Install VMware Tools on the virtual machine.
  3. Install any 64-bit application, for example Visual Studio, on the virtual machine.
  4. Create a new project and add vmGuestLibTest.c to the source files. Add all three header files.
  5. Build the project. The compilation fails and an error message similar to the following might be displayed:
  
  Error: not able to find file #includeCheck.h

Deployment Considerations

Download Instructions

Download and verify the patch bundle as follows:

1. Download patch ESX-1002430 from http://www.vmware.com/download/vi/vi3_patches.html .

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.

7. Extract the compressed tar archive:

# tar -xvzf ESX-1002430.tgz

8. Change to the newly created directory, /var/updates/ESX-1002430:

# cd ESX-1002430

Installation Instructions

After you download and extract the archive, and if you are in the directory that you previously created, use the following command to install the update:

# esxupdate update

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

# esxupdate -r file://<directory>/ESX-1002430 update

For example, if the host is called depot:

# esxupdate -r file:///depot/var/updates/ESX-1002430 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-1002430 update

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