Day: September 1, 2019

ESXI 6.7 update: No space left on device

I have tried to update my VMware ESXi 6.7 host to ESXi-6.7.0-20190802001-standard (Build 14320388) today. On the host’s SSH console, the command to use is:

esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-6.7.0-20190802001-standard -d  https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml

Unfortunately, this gave me this error:

[InstallationError]
  [Errno 28] No space left on device
        vibs = VMware_locker_tools-light_10.3.10.12406962-14141615 
  Please refer to the log file for more details.

/var/log/esxcli.log only gives that exact message! Still, it should be fairly obvious a problem, there is no disk space left.
Just, there is. The commonly accepted fix for this problem is to enable using your datastore as swap space:

  • Logon to web ui
  • Go to Host, Manage, System
  • Select the Swap entry and change it to be enabled
  • Pick a datastore of your choice, and enable Host cache and Local swap

I wrote about this here https://www.eknori.de/2018-03-18/vmware-esxi-errno-28-no-space-left-on-device-ibmchampion/

Unfortunately, in this situation, host swap already was enabled.

There is though, a workaround. You can use an image that doesn’t have the tools vib included with this command:

esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-6.7.0-20190802001-no-tools -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot
 -index.xml

You can then manually install the troublesome vib (if you have a need for tools) with this command:

esxcli software vib install -v https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/esx/vmw/vib20/tools-light/VMware_locker_tools-light_10.3.10.12406962-14141615.vib