Cannot Create ramdisk error during Upgrade (Scratchconfig isnt working?)

[David9876]

I am trying to use Update Manager to upgrade ESXi 5.1 to ESXi5.5. I am getting the error "Cannot create a ramdisk of the size 333mb to store the upgrade image."

The ESXi has plenty of disk/ram left.

I have researched and found an issue where the scratchconfig was pointing at a non-existent device. I set the scratchconfig and rebooted.

After the reboot in the new folder I did see the various var,core,logs etc folders, however  I still get this Cannot create ramdisk error when trying to upgrade.

I tried from various articles /vmfs/volumes/datastore uuid/.locker-host and /vmfs/volumes/datastore uuid/scratch, both with the same result.

I confirmed I can write in these new folders.

Everytime the log still says  ERROR', test 'SPACE_AVAIL_ISO', expected '349773754', found '0' despite the scracthconfig.

What I am doing wrong?

[David9876]

Does anyone have any suggestions? Or what else I can check?

(Also confirmed lockdown mode is not enabled)

Thanks again in advance any advice is appreciated.

[ssbkang]

Have you seen this blog post http://www.ispcolohost.com/2013/11/26/esxi-5-1-to-5-5-via-vmware-update-manager-vum-failure-due-to-r...

Looks like he had the same issue as yours.

[David9876]

Yup, thanks for your response. I have tried the steps in that article, the folders are created and everything but in the end I still get Cannot Create ramdisk error.

[David9876]

I checked via "vim-cmd hostsvc/advopt/view ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation" and the scratch path is correct.

I also checked /etc/vmware/locker.conf and the path also matches.

In the shell was able to cut and paste the path and cd to the path to confirm its all correct with the files in it.

Its driving me nuts why I keep getting 'ERROR', test 'SPACE_AVAIL_ISO', expected '349773754', found '0'

Please help if you have any suggestions, thanks.

[David9876 · Accepted solution]

It turns out another group had created another administrator account and removed administrator access from the root account.

/etc/vmware/hostd/authorization.xml shows that the root user has lost the 'Administrator' role:

<ACEData id="10">

<ACEDataEntity>ha-folder-root</ACEDataEntity>

<ACEDataId>10</ACEDataId>

<ACEDataIsGroup>false</ACEDataIsGroup>

<ACEDataPropagate>true</ACEDataPropagate>

<ACEDataRoleId>-5</ACEDataRoleId>

<ACEDataUser>root</ACEDataUser>

  </ACEData>

  When ACEDataRoleId is set to '-1' this indicates Administrator. In your case, the Role has been set to -5 which is not a defined role and likely hardened to do nothing.