Troubleshooting VMware Update Manager errors

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Today I was creating an upgrade baseline for some old ESX 4.x hosts to be patched up to a newer update level. I ran into an error whilst uploading an ESX ISO with the new update version and subsequently found myself troubleshooting the issue. I thought I would do a quick post on general things to check when troubleshooting VMware Update Manager.

 

  • First of all check you are of course uploading the correct file / ISO! Note that ESX upgrade baselines work with ISO files and ESXi deal with .zip files. Ensure you are using the correct file and build of ESX or ESXi depending on which you are planning on using.
  • Consult the log files! Logs are kept in different locations depending on your OS that VUM is running on.
    • Windows XP, 2000, and 2003 – C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Update Manager\Logs
    • Windows Server 2008 and above – C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Update Manager\Logs\
    • ESX update manager logs are kept in – /var/log/vmware/esxupdate.log
      • use cat /var/log/vmware/esxupdate.log | more to view the log file in ESX from the shell / PuTTy SSH session.
  • The log file in Windows should be named something similar to “vmware-vum-server-log4cpp.log”
  • You should be able to locate an issue that has occurred by noting the time the issue happened in Update Manager. Open up the relevant log file and navigate down to the time it happened in your logs. Hopefully the description / entry will point you in the right direction.

 

In my case today, I was trying to upload an ESX 4.0 Update 4 ISO (Complete) to create a new Upgrade Baseline for some older ESX 4.0 hosts. I got an error after uploading the ISO using the new baseline upgrade wizard. See below:

 

Error message after uploading ISO for Host Upgrade Baseline

 

Although the message above in the GUI is not very descriptive, after looking at the log files on the Update Manager server I found an entry which explained what my problem was:

 

Importing classic ESX upgrade package from C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\vum-temp2748786559745325611upload.iso
[2012-02-14 14:28:21:100 'HostUpgradeMetadata' 14028 DEBUG]  [metadata, 682] Stamped MD5: 580834a00621d98be322deb4b31971d8
[2012-02-14 14:28:21:100 'HostUpgradeMetadata' 14028 DEBUG]  [metadata, 559] ComputeISOChecksum started...
[2012-02-14 14:28:25:026 'HostUpgradeMetadata' 14028 DEBUG]  [metadata, 597] ComputeISOChecksum finished...
[2012-02-14 14:28:25:026 'HostUpgradeMetadata' 14028 ERROR]  [metadata, 693] MD5 check failed: f7a4523e2b7312b9b0f5441f8fa1f9d5
[2012-02-14 14:28:25:026 'HostUpgradeMetadata' 14028 ERROR]  [metadata, 721] Integrity check of upgrade ISO failed

 

The problem was that my ISO file was corrupt – the download had seemed to complete just fine when downloading from vmware.com, but there must have been an issue. A quick check of the ISO using my md5sum command line utility in Windows confirmed that the MD5 hash for this ISO file did not match the MD5 hash listed for the ISO on vmware.com (as pointed out in the log files above).

 

I downloaded a fresh copy of the ISO, checked the MD5 again  to ensure it matched this time, and re-uploaded to create a new baseline. Everything worked as expected this time around.

2 thoughts on “Troubleshooting VMware Update Manager errors”

  1. Hey Chris,

    Thanks very much for the feedback – its a fairly basic rundown on troubleshooting Update Manager, but hopefully useful to some nonetheless!

    Cheers
    Sean

  2. Can’t say I’ve run into a corrupt ISO, but those things happen. I like that you point out to check the type of upgrade file (ISO vs ZIP) as often that’s where I encounter folks who are stuck. Good article!

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