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vSphere 6.7: [Errno 28] No space left on device - Part 2

Alastair Grant | Tuesday 25 June 2019

Another update and another error for a VMware ESXi 6.7 profile update.

[root@host:~] esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-6.7.0-20190504001-standard -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml  
 [OSError]  
 [Errno 28] No space left on device  
 Please refer to the log file for more details.

It's the same old error, no space left on device.  There are multiple guides on how to resolve this, some of which I covered in part 1.

This time I spent a bit of time seeing if I could ascertain where the error was coming from, but unfortunately no joy.  Oodles of disk space available, aside from the out-of-the-box partitions which are tiny to start with.  I tried pillaging vmtools from my installation to see if that will free up space, as using the no-tools package sometimes works, but even with that partition freed up, the error was still happening.  The error happens before anything is downloaded, as actual disk usage does not change.

The workaround I used this time was to download an image profile and update offline.

  1. Navigate to VMWare's Product Patch page and identify the latest patch you want to install.
  2. Download the patch, which will be a zip file.
  3. Click on one of the bulletin links to be taken to the documentation on the update.
  4. Look for the Image Profiles section and take note of the image profile name (e.g. ESXi-6.7.0-20190604001-standard).
  5. Using your preferred method (Web ui, SCP etc) upload your newly downloaded Zip file to the host you wish to patch.
  6. Run the update, but instead of referencing an online depot, reference the Zip file, and use the Profile name you previously discovered in step 4, e.g.:
    esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-6.7.0-20190604001-standard -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/ESXi670-201906002.zip
  7. The update will run as normal, and you'll probably need to reboot the host to complete.

It is important not to install individual vibs through the esxcli software vib command as this does not do a profile update and will only install individual VIB updates.

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