Knowledge Base

Summaries and Symptoms

Issues fixed in this patch (and their relevant symptoms, if applicable) include:

• When virtual machines are run with older versions of VMware Tools (ESX 3.0.x) on ESX 4.0 and ESXi 4.0 hosts containing bnx2x NICs, the virtual machines might experience a network outage. Messages similar to the following might be displayed in /var/log/vmkernel:
  
  [bnx2x_stats_update:4098(vmnic6)]stats not updated for 3 times
  [bnx2x_stats_update:4099(vmnic6)]driver assert
  [bnx2x_panic_dump:597(vmnic6)]begin crash dump -----------------
  [bnx2x_panic_dump:606(vmnic6)]queue[0]: tx_pkt_prod(0) tx_pkt_cons(0) tx_bd_prod(0) >tx_bd_cons(0) *tx_cons_sb(0)
  [bnx2x_panic_dump:612(vmnic6)] rx_bd_prod(1fc) rx_bd_cons(0) *rx_bd_cons_sb>(0) rx_comp_prod(202) rx_comp_cons(2) *rx_cons_sb(2)
  [bnx2x_panic_dump:620(vmnic6)] rx_sge_prod(0) last_max_sge(0) fp_c_idx(0) >*sb_c_idx(0) fp_u_idx(2) *sb_u_idx(2) bd data(0,0)
  [bnx2x_panic_dump:647(vmnic6)]rx_bd[1f8]=[0:41cccdf0] sw_bd=[0x92ccc90]
  [bnx2x_panic_dump:668(vmnic6)]cqe[1f8]=[0:0:0:0]
  [bnx2x_panic_dump:676(vmnic6)]def_c_idx(35279) def_u_idx(0) def_x_idx(0) def_t_idx(0) > def_att_idx(0) attn_state(0) spq_prod_idx(210)
  bnx2x: begin fw dump (mark 0x800f53c)
  
• Fixes an issue in the bnx2x driver that might cause a network outage if you change the maximium tranmission unit (MTU) value on a Broadcom Netxtreme II 10gig NIC.
• Fixes an issue where unloading the bnx2x driver might cause the host to reboot.
  

Deployment Considerations

None beyond the required patch bundles and reboot information listed in the table above.

Patch Download and Installation

See the VMware vCenter Update Manager Administration Guide for instructions on using Update Manager to download and install patches to automatically update ESX 4.0 hosts.

To update ESX 4.0 hosts when not using Update Manager, download the patch zip file from http://support.vmware.com/selfsupport/download/ and install the bulletin using esxupdate from the command line of the host. For more information, see the ESX 4 Patch Management Guide.