Patching from 8.02 to 8.03 fails

[Bart Goedmakers]

When patching an ESXi host from 8.02 to 8.03 the installations fails with following warning:

A problem with one or more vFAT bootbank partitions was detected. Please refer to KB 91136 and run dosfsck on bootbank partitions.
Please refer to KB 91136 and run dosfsck on bootbank partitions.

Following document reffering to KB 91136 is not solving the issue.

Corrupted vFAT partitions from ESXi 6.5/6.7 environment might cause upgrades to ESXi 7.0.x or ESXi 8.0 to fail (broadcom.com)

Could not find any corrupt vFAT volumes.

Any help or ideas would be welcome

[Sebastian Ulatowski]

Hi, 

Do you have esxi installed on usb device ? 

I have the same issue on all servers, and I am wandering if the usb device is a problem. I have tested this on small HDD, nested esxi, and the small size (8GB) it is not an issue. 

But in fact right now I dont know what the problem is. 

Regards, 

Sebastian 

[Bart Goedmakers]

Hi I am booting from spinning disk in RAID 1. USB boot is not supported anymore in version 8 to my knowledge.

[Sebastian Ulatowski]

I dont know why I cannot repy on your info, but yes, you are right, but it still works on USB device, so I thought maybe it was the problem. 

So lets dig more,

 Regards,

Sebastian

[JLG]

Hello, had the same issue.

could you try this as it worked for me just now ?

https://www.steijvers.com/2024/07/04/12039/

here the list of commands from this blog :

esxcli storage filesystem list   (select the ID lines with vfat)

vmkfstools -P /vmfs/volumes/XXXxxxxxx-XXXXxxxxx-XXXXXxxx (get the DiskID under the  (on “disks”) line for the later commands dosfsck )

Stopping services and verify if files are open :

kill $(cat /var/run/crond.pid)

/usr/lib/vmware/vmsyslog/bin/shutdown.sh

lsof |  grep scratch

/etc/init.d/vmfstraced stop

lsof | grep var/run/log

/etc/init.d/vsandevicemonitord stop

fixing DATABANK disk dirty bit :

dosfsck -Vv /dev/disks/mydisk-ID

dosfsck -a -w /dev/disks/mydisk-ID

then restart the upgrade to 8.0.3

regards

[JLG]

Hello, had the same issue. could you try this as it worked for me just now ? www.steijvers.com/2024/07/04/12039 (after the command dosfsck -Vv /dev/disks/ you have to add the ID disk previously found) regards

[Bart Goedmakers]

Hi,

The procedure posted is not working for me, I already tried that one.
It states that my vFat disks are directories so it cannot repair them.

[Slater Lewis]

Using the process outlined below worked for me. Remember there may be multiple vfat entries and the process has to be applied to them. I was then able to perform the update to 8.0 u3.

[Gerard Bandstra]

I have the same problem on one server.

This works for me