Knowledge Base

This patch resolves the following issues:

• PR556930: When you create a quiesced snapshot of a virtual machine using either the VSS service, VMware Tools SYNC driver or a backup agent, hostd writes to the .vmx file. As a result, the .vmx file becomes blank.
  
  
• PR691038: The error logging mechanism in ESX host does not log all the storage error messages, because of this troubleshooting storage issues becomes difficult. Enhancing the log messages for the PSA components resolves this issue.
  
  
• PR722061: When a Linux kernel crashes, the linux kexec feature is used to enable booting into a special kdump kernel and gathering crash dump files. An SMP Linux guest configured with kexec might cause the virtual machine to fail with a monitor panic during this reboot. Error messages such as the following might be logged:
  
  vcpu-0| CPU reset: soft (mode 2)
  vcpu-0| MONITOR PANIC: vcpu-0:VMM fault 14: src=MONITOR rip=0xfffffffffc28c30d regs=0xfffffffffc008b50
  
  
• PR732114: VMware Snapshot Provider service (vmvss) is not removed while uninstalling VMware Tools on Windows 2008 R2 guest operating systems.
  
  
• PR735470: When completed SCSI commands do not return values to the service console, the service console displays the following error message and the ESX fails.
  
  COS Panic: Lost heartbeat @ esxsc_panic+0x43/0x4f error message
  
  
• PR736304: An ESX host might fail with a purple diagnostic screen that displays a Exception 14 error after a failed vMotion operation.
  
  @BlueScreen: #PF Exception 14 in world 4362:vemdpa IP 0x418006cf1edc addr 0x588
  3:06:49:28.968 cpu8:4362)Code start: 0x418006c00000 VMK uptime: 3:06:49:28.968
  3:06:49:28.969 cpu8:4362)0x417f80857ac8:[0x418006cf1edc]Port_BlockNotify@vmkernel:nover+0xf stack: 0x4100afa10000
  3:06:49:28.969 cpu8:4362)0x417f80857af8:[0x418006d5c81d]vmk_PortLinkStatusSet@vmkernel:nover+0x58 stack: 0x417fc88e3ad8
  3:06:49:28.970 cpu8:4362)0x417f80857b18:[0x41800723a310]svs_set_vnic_link_state@esx:nover+0x27 stack: 0x4100afb3f530
  3:06:49:28.971 cpu8:4362)0x417f80857b48:[0x418007306a9f]sf_platform_set_link_state@esx:nover+0x96 stack: 0x417f80857b88
  3:06:49:28.971 cpu8:4362)0x417f80857b88:[0x41800725a31e]sf_set_port_admin_state@esx:nover+0x149 stack: 0x41800000002c
  3:06:49:28.972 cpu8:4362)0x417f80857cb8:[0x4180072bb5f0]sf_handle_dpa_call@esx:nover+0x657 stack: 0x417f80857cf8
  
  This issue has been observed in environments where the Cisco Nexus 1000v switch is used.
  
  
• PR745790: When multiple logins are attempted simultaneously on an ESX host, the login process fails due to insufficient login timeout value. Allowing the users to configure the login timeout value solves the issue.
  
  
• PR748336: The option to capture vdf output is not available in ESX, without this option the user might not be able to know the Ramdisk space usage. Including vdf –h command in vm-support to address this issue.
  
  
• PR748954: If you run the esxcfg-info command, Network Hint does not display some VLAN IP address ranges on a physical NIC. The IP address range is also not displayed on the vCenter Server UI. An error message similar to the following is written to vmkernel.log:
  
  Dec 17 03:38:31 vmmon2 vmkernel: 8:19:26:44.179 cpu6:4102)NetDiscover: 732: Too many vlans for srcPort 0x2000002; won't track vlan 273
  
  
• PR753422: A storage vMotion operation on ESX 4.1 by default sets disk.enableUUID to true for a Windows 2008 virtual machine, thus enabling application quiescing. Subsequent quiesce snapshot operation will fail till the virtual machine undergoes a power cycle.
  
  
• PR755539: Virtual machine fails with monitor panic if paging is disabled. An error message similar to the following is written to vmware.log:
  
  Aug 16 14:17:39.158: vcpu-0| MONITOR PANIC: vcpu-1:VMM64 fault 14: src=MONITOR rip=0xfffffffffc262277 regs=0xfffffffffc008c50
  
  
• PR764592: When you try to install Solaris 10 on ESX, the guest operating system of the virtual machine reports a kernel panic error with the following message:
  
  panic[cpu0]/thread=fffffffffbc28340 ..page_unlock:...
  
  This issue is resolved by increasing the default memory size to 3GB.
  
  
• PR776217: The Emulex CIM provider exceeds the SFCB allocation of 256 file descriptors, resulting in the exhaustion of socket resources on ESX hosts. This issue is resolved by increasing the socket limit and optimizing the preallocated socket pairs
  
  
• PR776738: IBM server fails with purple diagnostic screen while trying to inject slow path packets. This occurs if the metadata associated with slowpath packet is copied without checking whether enough data is mapped, then the metadata moves out of the frame mapped area and causes a page fault. Mapping necessary data to include the metadata before copying it resolves the issue.
  
  
• PR779846: In ESX, when vmxnet3 is used as vNIC in some virtual machines and you turnoff packet coalescing, the ESX host fails with a purple screen as the virtual machine is booting up. Correcting the coalescing checking and assertion logic resolves this issue.
  
  
• PR783588: Restarting a Windows 2003 Server virtual machine that has shared memory pages takes approximately 5 to 10 minutes if you have a NetBurst-based CPU installed on the ESX host. However, you can shut down and power on the same virtual machine without experiencing any delay.
  
  
• PR785825: If route based on pNIC Load is the Teaming Policy of dvs portgroup, and vNIC-to-pNIC mapping is changed when some pNICs are saturated, vmkernel fails to send out RARP packets to update physical switch about this change, which results in virtual machines loosing network connectivity.
  
  
• PR786355: If you perform a VMotion operation to an ESX host on which the boot-time option page-sharing is disabled, the ESX host might fail with a purple screen.
  Disabling page-sharing severely affects performance of the ESX host. Because page-sharing should never be disabled, starting with this release, the page-sharing configuration option is removed.
  
  
• PR787510: When an ESX host encounters a corrupt VMFS volume, VMFS driver might leak memory causing VMFS heap exhaustion. This stops all VMFS operations causing orphaned virtual machines and missing datastores. vMotion operations might not work and attempts to start new virtual machines might fail with errors about missing files and memory exhaustion. This issue might affect all ESX hosts that share the corrupt LUN and have running virtual machines on that LUN.
  
  
• PR789532: After you upgrade VMware Tools on certain SLES virtual machines such as SLES 10 SP4 and SLES 11 SP2, attempts to restart the virtual machine might fail with a waiting for sda2....... not responding error message. This issue occurs because the INITRD_MODULES options in /etc/sysconfig/kernel are deleted during the VMware Tools uninstall process.
  This issue is resolved in this release. However, the issue might still occur if you upgrade from an earlier version of VMware Tools to the version of VMware Tools available in this release. See Technical Information Document (TID) 7005233 on the Novell website.
  
  
• PR793057: On virtual machines running on ESX 4.1 Update 1, attempts to upgrade VMware Tools might time out. Error messages similar to the following are written to vmware.log:
  
  Nov 30 15:36:34.839: vcpu-0| TOOLS INSTALL finished copying upgrader binary into guest. Starting Upgrader in guest.
  Nov 30 15:36:34.840: vcpu-0| TOOLS INSTALL Sending "upgrader.create 1"
  Nov 30 15:36:34.902: vcpu-0| TOOLS INSTALL Received guest file root from upgrader during unexpected state...ignoring.
  Nov 30 15:36:34.904: vcpu-0| GuestRpc: Channel 6, unable to send the reset rpc.
  Nov 30 15:36:34.905: vcpu-0| GuestRpc: Channel 6 reinitialized.
  
  
• PR794571: Prior to this release it was possible to create a greater than 2TB-512B datastore using the vSphere Command-Line Interface. However this is not a supported configuration.
  Now an attempt to create a datastore greater than 2TB-512 using the vSphere CLI fails gracefully.
  
  
• PR794764: In some scenarios, the reconfiguration task of a virtual machine fails due to a deadlock. The deadlock occurs while executing the reconfigure and data store change operations.
  
  
• PR815007: After you hot-add a SCSI disk successfully, hot-removing the same disk might fail with a disk not present error. Error messages similar to the following are written to the vmx log:
  
  2010-06-22T19:40:26.214Z| vmx| scsi2:11: Cannot retrieve shares: A one-of constraint has been violated (-19)
  2010-06-22T19:40:26.214Z| vmx| scsi2:11: Cannot retrieve sched/limit/: A one-of constraint has been violated (-19)
  2010-06-22T19:40:26.214Z| vmx| scsi2:11: Cannot retrieve sched/bandwidthCap/: A one-of constraint has been violated (-19)
  2010-06-22T19:40:33.285Z| vmx| [msg.disk.hotremove.doesntexist] scsi2:11 is not present.
  2010-06-22T19:40:33.285Z| vmx| [msg.disk.hotremove.Failed] Failed to remove scsi2:11.
  
  
• PR815079: The System Event Log in the vSphere Client might be empty if ESX 4.1 Update 2 is run on certain physical servers. The host's IPMI logs (/var/log/ipmi/0/sel) might also be empty. An error message similar to the following might be written to /var/log/messages:
  
  Dec 8 10:36:09 esx-200 sfcb-vmware_raw[3965]: IpmiIfcSelReadAll: failed call to IpmiIfcSelReadEntry cc = 0xff
  
  
• PR817142: When you try to change the power policy of an ESX host running on a IBM BladeCenter HX5 UEFI server, the Power Management Settings on the vSphere Client displays the following message:
  
  Technology: Not Available
  Active Policy: Not Supported.
  
  
• PR817677: The VMware Tools service (vmtoolsd.exe) fails during the Windows 2008 R2 guest operating system start up process. However, you can start this service manually after the operating system start up process is complete.
  
  
• PR818267: When you attempt a batch capture on a server with 128 logical CPUs, the esxtop fails. This happens due to the limited buffer size of the header. Increasing the buffer size of the header resolves this issue.
  
  
• PR818951: On an ESX host, a secondary Fault Tolerance virtual machine installed with a VMXNET 3 adapter might fail. Error messages similar to the following are written to vmware.log:
  
  Dec 15 16:11:25.691: vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox timed out.
  Dec 15 16:11:25.691: vmx| Vix: [115530 guestCommands.c:2468]: Error VIX_E_TOOLS_NOT_RUNNING in VMAutomationTranslateGuestRpcError(): VMware Tools are not running in the guest
  Dec 15 16:11:30.287: vcpu-0| StateLogger::Commiting suicide: Statelogger divergence
  Dec 15 16:11:31.295: vmx| VTHREAD watched thread 4 "vcpu-0" died
  
  This issue does not occur on a virtual machine installed with E1000 adapter.
  
  
• PR818986: VMFS might issue I/Os to a volume when a VMFS heartbeat reclaim operation is in progress or a virtual reset operation is performed on an underlying device. As a result, warning messages similar to the following are logged:
  
  WARNING: ScsiDeviceIO: 2360: Failing WRITE command (requiredDataLen=512 bytes) to write-quiesced partition naa.9999999999
  
  Further, an alert message is reported on the ESX console. These warnings and alerts are harmless and can be ignored. In this release, the alert messages are removed and warnings are changed to log messages.
  
  
• PR821888: When you install certain versions of VMware Tools such as version 8.3.7, a spew of messages similar to the following might be written to vmkernel.log:
  
  Nov 22 11:55:06 vm_name-c vmkernel: 107:01:39:59.667 cpu12:21263)VSCSIFs: 329: handle 9267(vscsi0:0):Invalid Opcode (0xd1)
  Nov 22 11:55:06 vm_name-c vmkernel: 107:01:39:59.687 cpu5:9487)VSCSIFs: 329: handle 9261(vscsi0:0):Invalid Opcode (0xd1)
  
  
• PR824945: If you create a virtual machine snapshot and later delete the virtual machine, independent or non-independent virtual disks that were detached from the virtual machine earlier might also be deleted.
  
  
• PR827512: On ESX 4.1 Update2 hosts, the default Storage Array Type Plugin (SATP) for LSI arrays was VMW_SATP_LSI, which did not support Asymmetric Logical Unit Access (ALUA) functionality. Starting with this release, SATP Plugin for LSI arrays that supports ALUA is changed to VMW_SATP_ALUA, so that TPGS/ALUA arrays are automatically claimed by the default VMW_SATP_ALUA satp plugin.
  
  Following are the vendor model descriptions of storage arrays that are claimed by VMW_SATP_ALUA:
  
  • LSI INF-01-00
  • IBM ^1814* DS4000
  • IBM ^1818* DS5100/DS5300
  • IBM ^1746* IBM DS3512/DS3524
  • DELL MD32xx Dell MD3200
  • DELL MD32xxi Dell MD3200i
  • DELL MD36xxi Dell MD3600i
  • DELL MD36xxf Dell MD3600f
  • SUN LCSM100_F
  • SUN LCSM100_I
  • SUN LCSM100_S
  • SUN STK6580_6780 Sun StorageTek 6580/6780
  • SUN SUN_6180 Sun Storage 6180
  • SGI IS500 SGI InfiniteStorage 4000/4100
  • SGI IS600 SGI InfiniteStorage 4600
  
  
• PR830293: An attempt to delete a file from a directory with more than 468 files or delete the directory itself might fail, and the ESX host might erroneously report that the VMFS is corrupted. The ESX host logs error messages similar to the following to the /var/log/vmkernel:
  
  cpu10:18599)WARNING: Fil3: 10970: newLength 155260 but zla 2
  cpu10:18599)Fil3: 7054: Corrupt file length 155260, on FD <70, 93>, not truncating
  
  
• PR833365: Any changes that you make to the /etc/modprobe.conf file might be overwritten when you uninstall VMware Tools.
  
  
• PR835991: When you set the VMDirectIO path for a network interface adapter in pass-through mode and assign it to a virtual machine, the state of the Device Control register’s Interrupt Disable bit (INTx) is displayed as enabled for the virtual machine and disabled for ESX. This is incorrect, because the INTx value should be in enabled state for both the cases.
  
  
• PR836439: IP virtualization, which allows you to allocate unique IP addresses to RDP sessions, might not work on a Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit running on ESX 4.0 Update 1. This happens because the vsock dlls were registered by separate 32-bit and 64-bit executable file. This makes the catalog IDs to be out-of-sync between 32-bit and 64-bit Winsock catalogs for vSock LSP.
  
  
• PR836631: Cannot join ESX host to Active Directory when DNS domain suffix differs from the Active Directory domain name.
  
  
• PR837147: An sfcb-vmware_base TIMEOUT error might cause the hostd and vpxa services to fail and the ESX host to disconnect intermittently from vCenter Server. Error messages similar to the following are written to /var/log/messages:
  
  Jan 30 12:25:17 sfcb-vmware_base[2840729]: TIMEOUT DOING SHARED SOCKET RECV RESULT (2840729)
  Jan 30 12:25:17 sfcb-vmware_base[2840729]: Timeout (or other socket error) waiting for response from provider
  Jan 30 12:25:17 sfcb-vmware_base[2840729]: Request Header Id (1670) != Response Header reqId (0) in request to provider 685 in process 3. Drop response.
  Jan 30 12:25:17 vmkernel: 7:19:02:45.418 cpu32:2836462)User: 2432: wantCoreDump : hostd-worker -enabled : 1
  
  
• PR839355: The vSphere Client overview real-time performance charts might display data for a virtual machine even for the period when the virtual machine was powered off.
  
  
• PR841073: An ESX host might fail with a purple diagnostic screen that displays error messages similar to the following because of an issue in VMFS module.
  
  @BlueScreen: #PF Exception 14 in world 8008405:vmm0:v013313 IP 0x418001562b6d addr 0x28
  34:15:27:55.853 cpu9:8008405)Code start: 0x418000e00000 VMK uptime: 34:15:27:55.853
  34:15:27:55.853 cpu9:8008405)0x417f816af398:[0x418001562b6d]PB3_Read@esx:nover+0xf0 stack: 0x41000e1c9b60
  34:15:27:55.854 cpu9:8008405)0x417f816af468:[0x4180015485df]Fil3ExtendHelper@esx:nover+0x172 stack: 0x0
  34:15:27:55.854 cpu9:8008405)0x417f816af538:[0x41800154ded4]Fil3_SetFileLength@esx:nover+0x383 stack: 0xa00000001
  34:15:27:55.854 cpu9:8008405)0x417f816af5a8:[0x41800154e0ea]Fil3_SetFileLengthWithRetry@esx:nover+0x6d stack: 0x417f816af5e8
  34:15:27:55.854 cpu9:8008405)0x417f816af638:[0x41800154e38b]Fil3_SetAttributes@esx:nover+0x246 stack: 0x41027fabeac0
  34:15:27:55.854 cpu9:8008405)0x417f816af678:[0x41800101de7e]FSS_SetFileAttributes@vmkernel:nover+0x3d stack: 0x1000b000
  34:15:27:55.855 cpu9:8008405)0x417f816af6f8:[0x418001434418]COWUnsafePreallocateDisk@esx:nover+0x4f stack: 0x4100a81b4668
  34:15:27:55.855 cpu9:8008405)0x417f816af728:[0x418001434829]COWIncrementFreeSector@esx:nover+0x68 stack: 0x3
  34:15:27:55.855 cpu9:8008405)0x417f816af7b8:[0x418001436b1a]COWWriteGetLBNAndMDB@esx:nover+0x471 stack: 0xab5db53a0
  34:15:27:55.855 cpu9:8008405)0x417f816af908:[0x41800143761f]COWAsyncFileIO@esx:nover+0x8aa stack: 0x41027ff88180
  34:15:27:55.855 cpu9:8008405)0x417f816af9a8:[0x41800103d875]FDS_AsyncIO@vmkernel:nover+0x154 stack: 0x41027fb585c0
  34:15:27:55.856 cpu9:8008405)0x417f816afa08:[0x4180010376cc]DevFSFileIO@vmkernel:nover+0x13f stack: 0x4100077c3fc8
  
  
• PR843469: ESX host stops responding when VMW_SATP_LSI module runs out of heap memory. This issue occurs on servers that have access to LUNs which are claimed by VMW_SATP_LSI module. A memory leak that exists in VMW_SATP_LSI module forces the module to run out of memory. Error messages similar to the following are logged to vmkernel.log file:
  
  Feb 22 14:18:22 [host name] vmkernel: 2:03:59:01.391 cpu5:4192)WARNING: Heap: 2218: Heap VMW_SATP_LSI already at its maximumSize. Cannot expand.
  Feb 22 14:18:22 [host name] vmkernel: 2:03:59:01.391 cpu5:4192)WARNING: Heap: 2481: Heap_Align(VMW_SATP_LSI, 316/316 bytes, 8 align) failed. caller: 0x41800a9e91e5
  Feb 22 14:18:22 [host name] vmkernel: 2:03:59:01.391 cpu5:4192)WARNING: VMW_SATP_LSI: satp_lsi_IsInDualActiveMode: Out of memory.
  
  The memory leak in the VMW_SATP_LSI module has been resolved.
  
  
• PR846028: The networking configuration for an ESX host might appear blank on the vSphere Client. Running the command esxcfg-vswitch -l from the local Tech Support Mode console fails with the error:
  
  Failed to read advanced option subtree UserVars: Error interacting with configuration file
  /etc/vmware/esx.conf: Unlock of ConfigFileLocker failed : Error interacting with configuration file /etc/vmware/esx.conf: I am being asked to delete a .LOCK file that I'm not sure is mine. This is a bad thing and I am going to fail. Lock should be released by (0)
  
  Error messages similar to the following are written to hostd.log:
  
  [2011-04-28 14:22:09.519 49B40B90 verbose 'App'] Looking up object with name = "firewallSystem" failed.
  [2011-04-28 14:22:09.610 49B40B90 verbose 'NetConfigProvider'] FetchFn: List of pnics opted out
  [2011-04-28 14:22:09.618 49B40B90 info 'HostsvcPlugin'] Failed to read advanced option subtree UserVars: Error interacting with configuration file /etc/vmware/esx.conf: Unlock of ConfigFileLocker failed : Error interacting with configuration file /etc/vmware/esx.conf: I am being asked to delete a .LOCK file that I'm not sure is mine. This is a bad thing and I am going to fail. Lock should be released by (0)
  
  
• PR852297: On an ESX host, if you configure the Network I/O Control (NetIOC) to set the Host Limit for Virtual Machine Traffic to a value higher than 2048Mbps, the bandwidth limit is not enforced.
  
  
• PR854445: An ESX host might fail with a purple diagnostic screen that displays error messages similar to the following during a VMFS volume resignaturing operation:
  
  #DE Exception 0 in world 20519269:helper22-6 @ 0x418024b26a33
  117:05:20:07.444 cpu11:20519269)Code start: 0x418024400000 VMK uptime: 117:05:20:07.444
  117:05:20:07.444 cpu11:20519269)0x417f84b2f290:[0x418024b26a33]Res3_ExtendResources@esx:nover+0x56 stack: 0x4100ab400040
  117:05:20:07.445 cpu11:20519269)0x417f84b2f2e0:[0x418024af9a58]Vol3_Extend@esx:nover+0x9f stack: 0x0
  117:05:20:07.445 cpu11:20519269)0x417f84b2f4f0:[0x418024afd3f6]Vol3_Open@esx:nover+0xdc9 stack: 0x417f84b2f668
  117:05:20:07.446 cpu11:20519269)0x417f84b2f6a0:[0x4180246225d1]FSS_Probe@vmkernel:nover+0x3ec stack: 0x417f84b2f6f0
  117:05:20:07.446 cpu11:20519269)0x417f84b2f6f0:[0x41802463d0e6]FDS_AnnounceDevice@vmkernel:nover+0x1dd stack: 0x3133306161336634
  
  
• PR854922: Network connectivity to guest operating systems using kernel versions 2.6.34 and higher, and configured to use IPv6 might not work after you install VMware Tools.
  
  
• PR862521: An ESX host might fail with a purple diagnostic screen that displays error messages and stack trace similar to the following when you perform a recompose operation on VMware View:
  
  @BlueScreen: Out of memory for timers
  0:20:06:44.618 cpu38:4134)Code start: 0x418033600000 VMK uptime: 0:20:06:44.618
  0:20:06:44.619 cpu38:4134)0x417f80136cf8:[0x418033658726]Panic@vmkernel:nover+0xa9 stack: 0x417f80136d78
  0:20:06:44.619 cpu38:4134)0x417f80136d28:[0x41803367958e]TimerAlloc@vmkernel:nover+0x10d stack: 0x9522bf175903
  0:20:06:44.619 cpu38:4134)0x417f80136d78:[0x418033679fbb]Timer_AddTC@vmkernel:nover+0x8a stack: 0x4100b8317660
  0:20:06:44.620 cpu38:4134)0x417f80136e08:[0x41803384d964]SCSIAsyncDeviceCommandCommon@vmkernel:nover+0x2f7 stack: 0x41037db8c
  0:20:06:44.620 cpu38:4134)0x417f80136e58:[0x41803383fbed]FDS_CommonAsyncIO@vmkernel:nover+0x48 stack: 0x410092dea0e8
  
  
• PR867003: In ESX host, when the Emulex LPe12000 driver fails to set the dma_boundary value in the host template, the dma_boundary value is set to zero. This causes the SG list addresses to go beyond the address boundary defined for the driver, resulting in data corruption.
  
  
• PR867742: On some guest operating systems, IPv6 addresses might not be displayed in the vSphere Client as well as the command vmware-vim-cmd.
  
  
• PR874445: The vmkernel.log and the dmesg command might show the message C1E enabled by the BIOS. The message may also be shown even when C1E has been disabled by the BIOS, and it may not be shown even when C1E has been enabled by the BIOS.
  
  
• PR876554: Cannot remove the extraConfig settings for a virtual machine through API.
  
  
• PR876578: Running the command esxcli network connection list command might result in an error message similar to the following when the ESX host is running raw IP connections, such as vSphere HA (FDM) agent and ICMP ping:
  
  terminate called after throwing an instance of 'VmkCtl::Lib::SysinfoException' what(): Sysinfo error on operation returned status : Bad parameter. Please see the VMkernel log for detailed error information Aborted
  
  
• PR890681: When you upgrade VMware Tools from an earlier version to a later version, IP virtualization fails. This happens because, the ESX host fails to check for the new VMCI driver version and is unable install the vsock DLL files.