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markiusuk
Contributor
Contributor

RANT: Update Manager 4 installation

This is a rant, pure and simple.

You'd think that a company with the resources of EMC would be able to develop and test software properly. Sadly, when it comes to Update Manager this does not appear to be the case.

My main complaints are:

1. The Update Manager installation will fail if your Username OR password contain spaces or hyphens. Lame.

2. The Update Manager installation complains that there is less than 20GB available when Windows clearly reports >100GB free. Lame.

3. For some reason Update Manager failed because it was defaulting to a path of "d:/build/ob/bora-208126/bora/build/release/integrity/sysimage/integrity/main". When you try to change this the installer quits. Lame.

Must try harder.

/RANT

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18 Replies
vbondzio
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi Mark,

I hope you feel better after your rant :-).

I'm not here to discuss in which way QA is done, or any other decisions by VMware regarding it's products, but I can help you with point 3 of your list, if it is still relevant to you.

I had a customer with the same issue, I'm still trying to figure out what the exact (environmental) cause is for this to happen, because I could not reproduce it on my own.

- Ok, proceed to the point in the installation where the error message (that you can not change the path if you try) pops up

- Go to the current users temp directory and then traverse down 1\vum, you should see a file called "configvalues.txt" (%TEMP%\1\vum\configvalues.txt)

- Should you not find it, just trace the installation with Sysinternals Process Monitor until you reach the error and search for the file in the trace

- make a copy of the file contents, e.a. :

patch_depot_proxy_url=

patch_depot_url=

patch_store=d:/build/ob/bora-208126/bora/build/release/integrity/sysimage/integrity/main

vpxd_location=localhost

vpxd_port=80

- save the file with you changes to the patch_store and change it to read only, it should now survive in the temp folder when you chancel the installation.

- start the installation again and you will see that the path is now set to the one you choose when editing the configvalues.txt

- click next

- before you proceed any further, remove the RO attribute from the configvalues.txt

The installation should now finish without any further complications.

For everything else, fill a Feature Request, those will be read!

So much from my side, hope I could help.

Cheers,

Valentin

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pschmidt
Contributor
Contributor

I can say that this workaround, posted by Valentin will work, because i am the customer who had this problem first Smiley Happy

But at least that was the only problem while installing the whole VCenter, and because we are the two only users who had this special problem i just can say that VMwares QA can't fix any problem occuring. Especially if its not reproduceable as simple as we can reproduce it Smiley Happy

Patrick

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vbondzio
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi Patrick,

what are you still doing here? I though you wanted to head home and call it a day :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

But a KB is in the works and I'm going to play with the installer some more before opening a PR with engineering.

Talk to you later.

Valentin

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

can you please attach vminst.log, vmware-vci-vciInstallUtils-log4cpp.log and vim-um-msi.log files from temp folder? Which username and password you are referring to? Update manager database username and password? or vCenter Server information username and password?

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BjornMoE
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

I ran into the same problem with a vcenter upgrade today (build 208156). The workaround did solve the issue. Is this a known issue at VMware?

/Bjorn

IT - Datacenter | Networking |Virtualization | Storage | Security - Solutions

IT Solution Provider

VMware Certified Professional

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RParker
Immortal
Immortal

1. The Update Manager installation will fail if your Username OR password contain spaces or hyphens. Lame.

Log into any system online, you can't use ANY username / password with spaces, that's a limitation since DOS, that's not lame, you just haven't noticed.

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vbondzio
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi Bjorn,

it is know in that way that the solution is posted here, but it has not been reported as a bug by me yet, since I was unable to reproduce.

Since you are the 3rd to have this issue, I will type up a PR / KB tonight and hope we can investigate without a repro.

Cheers

Valentin

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pschmidt
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Valentin,

unable to reproduce, but you saw it live on my vcenter Smiley Happy

Cheers

Patrick

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BjornMoE
Contributor
Contributor

Ok, great.

If you want, I can assist you with some logfiles, and even reproduce the issue.

/Bjorn

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markiusuk
Contributor
Contributor

DELETE

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markiusuk
Contributor
Contributor

Pull the other one. Most systems are fine with hyphens.

I stand by my original statement and I think you're a troll.

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vbondzio
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

@Patrick

I know, but it would have taken to much time to record all possible environmental influences, IIRC, I asked you if you could send me your vC, but nooooo, you use a physical box to host your vCenter Server / UM :-D.

@Bjorn

Thanks for the offer, I hope that won't be necessary, but don't flinch should I call you up in it :-).

Cheers

Valentin

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pschmidt
Contributor
Contributor

No Valentin, I used a VM for vCenter but I forgot to send you the VM and now the problem is solved.

But I will contact you next week anyway because of our EVA-Test!

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Frank_Poelert
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Patrick,

The only way to reproduce it, is to install vCenter2.5 in a test server, do an upgrade to 4.0 (not U1) and then check the vci-integrity.xml.

You will see that the patch datastore is set to this weird path.

I ran into this problem in my test environment (dedicated to precisely these well tested VMware updates).

I corrected the path first and then installed the update of VUM without any problems.

After the upgrade from 2.5 to 4.0 the update manager didn't work anymore in my production environment. I solved it by uninstalling and reinstalling VUM.

Now I know it was the path to the patch datastore . . .

I think VMware really tested this piece of software, probably on the system where it was developed and where that directory was present.

Regards,

Frank

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vbondzio
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi Frank,

thanks for the recommendation, but I really tried to reproduce it, and this was on my scenario list. Patrick's system did not have any residue of former UM installations from what I could see (vci-integrity, registry settings). It wouldn't have slipped through QA if it was that simple. It is probably an issue in the installer somewhere in the customactions, as I said, I filled a PR and we will look into this.

Cheers

Valentin

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ben2402
Contributor
Contributor

Same issue here. Wasted an hour trying to figure it out.

Workaround worked.

Upgrade from 2.5

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sysmast
Contributor
Contributor

My original error was "Unable to Update Update Manger Database"

At this time after applying the above "fix" i'm further along, and back to "Unable to Update Update Manager Database"

Still working on this, but figured I'd throw in the ME TOO!!!

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Oletho
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Had the same problem updating from U1 to U2, solved by the Valentin workaround.

Ole Thomsen

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