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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

vCSA 6.5 pre-upgrade warning - User vdcs does not have the expected uid 1006

While upgrading vCSA 6.0U3 to 6.5U1, the pre-upgrade check shows the following warning.

User vdcs does not have the expected uid 1006

Suggested Resolution: Please refer to the corresponding KB article.

The vdcs user indeed has UID 1007 (UID 1006 is in use for another user), but it's a default installation, i.e. all users were created automatically.

I also cannot find any KB article for this.

Does this need to be fixed (how)? Will it cause any issues if this user has a uid other than 1006?

André

18 Replies
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

This doesn't seem to be an isolated issue. I just found another post with the same warning (Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance 6.0 to 6.5 fails due to "Pre-upgrade check error"​)

André

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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

I've heard of someone having this issue in the past but opened an SR to get it resolved. When 6.0 is upgraded to vCSA 6.5, UID 1006 belongs to user "content-library". If you have a clone of this vCenter (or if it's a lab) and you want to experiment on changing the UID, I might try that. The key will be finding all files that had the old UID and changing those since these users don't have a /home. If you want to try that out, look for those files first.

find / -user vdcs

Assign a temporary UID to vdcs with usermod -u xxxx vdcs where "xxxx" is some UID not taken. This will give you all UIDs assigned to known users and so is easier to not create a collision:

awk -F: '{printf "%s:%s\n",$1,$3}' /etc/passwd

Then you'll have to change all files ownership from when vdcs had UID 1007 to its new UID of 1006.

find / -user 1007 -exec chown -h vdcs {}

I haven't tried this myself although I would if I still had a vCSA 6.0 laying around. If you do test this out, you may need to stop all services (service-control --stop --all) before changing UIDs as some daemons will panic the next time they fetch binaries from disk.

I don't know if this will be of any help, but if you are able to test it out it may be worth a shot. FWIW I guess...

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Thanks for your feedback. Since this is a customer/production environment, I rather don't want to change anything myself without knowing the exact implication. Maybe an SR is the best option, unless VMware decides to post the KB article they are referring to in the warning.

Anyway, I was really surprised when I saw this warning, because it doesn't make much sense to me to deal with UIDs (other than e.g. UID 0)

Thanks aagin

André

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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

Furthermore, it would make even more sense to mention that KB in the error message as stated, but I guess that's just wishful thinking.

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

... but I guess that's just wishful thinking.

Wishes sometimes come true on X-Mas 😉

André

shanewendel1
Contributor
Contributor

Andre did you get any update?  I had the same issue today doing a vCSA 6.0 -> 6.5 upgrade.  This is really the only substantive thread I can find on the subject.

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jayf628
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Same problem here.  I love that it says to refer to the corresponding KB article, without listing one, and with one apparently not even existing.  That's pretty awesome.

daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

You might want to give those steps a shot I mentioned above, so long as you have a snapshot and/or backup. In André heard anything I'd also be glad to know it.

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jayf628
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I opened a ticket w/ VMware and was told that the latest version (6.5 U1c) addresses the issue.

Please be informed that this is a known issue affecting version 6.0 U2 and later. To resolve the issue, perform upgrade to latest version of 6.5 i.e. 6.5 U1c.

I am retrying an upgrade now, using the new ISO (which apparently came out the very day that I downloaded the previous one).  I'll post my results here.

EDIT: I used the most updated ISO (VMware-VCSA-all-6.5.0-7119157.iso) and am still getting the same error.  I have sent my feedback back to VMware.

daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

What version were you trying previously?

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jayf628
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Initially I was using VMware-VCSA-all-6.5.0-5973321.iso.  I just tried VMware-VCSA-all-6.5.0-7119157.iso and got the exact same error.  Smiley Sad

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daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

And are you also coming from 6U3? This is all good information to record in this thread so other people may follow along.

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jayf628
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Yes, same scenario, attempting to upgrade from 6.0 U3 to 6.5 U1 (and then tried U1c).

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jayf628
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Worked with Support today, and showed them that the 6.5 U1c ISO still does not work, meaning I still get the error.  The tech reached out to some other people and the ultimate answer was that, since we aren't currently using Content Library, I could ignore and proceed past the error.

From Engineering:

"If they were not using Content Library on 6.0, they can safely ignore this warning. There is no further action necessary. They can also start using the Content Library after this upgrade if they so choose."

We have no timeline at this stage for when this article will be released.

So I went ahead, and everything seemed to work.  I will do a more detailed checkout tomorrow.

sc_21111
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I'm having the same issue withe 6.5U1d upgrading from 6.0 U3 .

Still get the same error

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jayf628
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Did you see my previous post, just before yours?  Unless you are currently using Content Library, there should be no concern; simply click past and move forward with the upgrade.  If you are using Content Library, you will probably want to contact Support for guidance.

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fifthman_roshan
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

This was helpful post. Even i got the same error with "VMware-VCSA-all-6.5.0-8815520" build. So its still not resolved and there is no KB article too. I will post if i come across any issues.

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a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

A KB article has been created for this, see https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/52559

André

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