Error 15 file not found press any key to continue after ESX 4.1 remediation

[Gene_H]

VM host was at 4.1.0, 320092.  I tried remediating to 4.1.0, 348481 using vCenter Update Manager.

After the system had applied the patches and was going thru the reboot process I received the following error:

Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

uppermem 819200

kernel /vmlinuz ro root=UUID=ceadc074-b397-adcb-7b7604a8ab4a mem=800M quiet

[Linux-bzImage, setup-0x1e00, size=0x179cdc]

initrd /initrd.img

Error 15: File not found

Press any key to continue...

[richyd99]

Hi Forgen,

Thanks for your support advice. Unfortunately I tried the commands that you used to resolve your problem however I get the same issue with Error 15 file not found. If I go through your steps again, the red blinking file is now renamed to  initrd.img -> initrd-2.6.18-164.ESX.img rather than the originally 194.img

Any ideas?

Cheers

Richard

[vPDV]

Hi guys

Had the same issue today after upgrading an ESX 3.5 to 4.1. The host upgrade through Update Manager went well, but the misery started when I attempted to install the remaining patches through Update Manager.

It turned out, as mentioned earlier, that the /boot filesystem was almost full, leaving too little space to succesfully rebuild the boot image.

To make a long story short:

• evacuate older initrd-2.4* boot images to another filesystem
• rebuild the image with the command: esxcfg-boot -b
• verified that the initrd.img symbolic link pointed to the correct boot image (in my case initrd-2.6.18-194.ESX.img )
• Reboot

That's basically it. No need to reinstall.

I plan to perform some more cleaning up later on, including the cleanup of the ESX 3.5 stuff.

Thanks to previous posters for useful insights.

Best regards

Patrice

[mjdh13]

This is what worked for me (I found that you also had to remove the initrd.img under /boot/trouble)

ESX host Breaking after running Update Manager - Error 15. File not found!!!!

First, we need to get into the "grub" loader....

1. Reboot the ESX host.

2. When the GRUB screen appears, press the space bar to stop the server from automatically booting into VMware ESX.

3. Use the arrow keys to select Service Console only (troubleshooting mode).

4. Press the "a" key to modify the kernel arguments (boot options).

5. On the line presented, type a space followed by the word "single".

6. Press Enter. The server continues to boot into single-user mode.When presented with a bash prompt such as sh-2.05b#

Now the fix.....

1. cd /boot

2. ls -l (see the red blinking initrd.img -> initrd-2.6.18-274.ESX.img)

3. rm /boot/initrd.img

4. cd /boot/trouble

5. ls -lsa ( see initrd.img )

6. mv initrd.img initrd.img.old

7. cd ../

8. ln -s  initrd-2.6.18-274.ESX.img initrd.img

9. esxcfg-boot -b

10. esxcfg-boot -t (fixes image in /boot/trouble)

11. Shutdown -r now

Should be ok now!

Hope this helps others.

mjdh