News

ESX V3.X Patches Released 3/30/2007

VMware has released more patches for both ESX 3.0.0 and ESX 3.0.1. In each set VMware has put out at least one patch that diverges from their normal patch methodology and is actually a .tgz with more patches inside ( Patch ESX-6431040 for 3.0.1, and Patch ESX-5754280 for 3.0.0 )
. I spent a couple of hours today modifying esx-autopatch.pl to accommodate the changes. I also updated patchlist.txt for both VMware ESX 3.0.0 and VMware ESX 3.0.1.

Posted by Dominic Rivera at Friday, March 30, 2007.

VMkernel Error Decoder Updated for ESX 3.0.1

A big thanks to Mike Nisk (aka grasshopper) who not only showed me how to obtain all of the error codes in the first place, he even groked through all the data and formatted it for me as well. Now when you get one of those "0x0badXXXX" errors in your log files you can use the VMkernel Error Decoder to decipher the meaning.

Posted by Dominic Rivera at Friday, March 23, 2007.

esx-autopatch.pl

If you have to deploy a number of ESX hosts and keep them updated with the latest patches you probably know how tedious the process is. For ESX v3.0.1 there are currently 20 patches which are downloadable as gzip'd tarballs (.tgz) and each one has to be installed in the proper order. Annoyed with the process, I've created a perl script to do the work for you named esx-autopatch.pl. All you need is access to an FTP server, a current list of updates, and an ESX host that needs to be updated. esx-autopatch.pl will download the list of updates, check to see what you already have installed, download the necessary updates, check the md5sums install the patches and even clean up after itself. If you're tired of manual patches give it a shot.

Posted by Dominic Rivera at Thursday, March 22, 2007.