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RayRookie
Contributor
Contributor

UMDS not updating metadata

OS: RHEL 7.9
UMDS Version: VMware Update Manager Download Service 6.7.0.42129 Build = 17123432

Use case:

I've scheduled "/usr/local/vmware-umds/bin/vmware-umds -D" for every night and when there are new patches available, UMDS downloads those OK. But for some reason, patch metadata files will not get updated when next set of patches are downloaded. So the problem goes like this:

- I installed the UMDS some time ago and ran the initial download of patches by issuing "/usr/local/vmware-umds/bin/vmware-umds -D" so all patches were downloaded and metadata is OK
- as I've scheduled that previous command to run every night, UMDS tries to load new patches every night but as there are no new patches released, it ignores all downloads which is OK
- then comes the time when vmware releases new patches
- next night UMDS downloads patch files ok, but the metadata file containing listing of new patches is not updated. And as ESXi host checks these metadata files when trying to update, it cannot find new patches from UMDS.
- If I check from filesystem, those new patches are downloaded to UMDS ok

- for example, vmware released patch file VMware_bootbank_cpu-microcode_6.7.0-3.139.17700514.vib on Mar 19 2021. Next night UMDS downloaded that file (file can be found from filesystem of UMDS).
- file containing metadata (in this case file vmware.xml which can be found from metadata file vmw-ESXi-6.7.0-metadata.zip which ESXi downloads when trying to update itself) doesn't get updated, so it doesn't contain any reference to that patch file which is downloaded ok.
- and as that .xml do not contain reference to that patch file, ESXi thinks that there are no new patches available

UMDS is run as root user and all the patch files are loaded ok meaning that this doesn't look like any filesystem permission problem. Of course I can remove all downloaded patches (containing metadata files) every night and download them again but that doesn't sound reasonable. Only hint that something may fail is following line in stdout when running "vmware-umds -D":

WARN - No platform found for : embeddedEsx-6.7.0-INTL

But also that sounds odd, because I have that host version in my UMDS configuration:

[root@hostfoo umds]# /usr/local/vmware-umds/bin/vmware-umds -G|grep -A5 "Host Versions"
Host Versions for which patch content will be downloaded:
embeddedEsx-6.5.0-INTL
embeddedEsx-6.6.1-INTL
embeddedEsx-6.6.2-INTL
embeddedEsx-6.6.3-INTL
embeddedEsx-6.7.0-INTL

3 Replies
mbriois
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Ray,

I just figured that i have exactly the same problem !

I manualy removed all the "metadata.zip" files from the local store and rescheduled a manual download.

All "metadata.zip" files we're downloaded again and are now "uptodate"

We'll see at the next release if it's still stuck.

 

 

 

RayRookie
Contributor
Contributor

Well, nice to see that I'm not the only one. Maybe I'll try the following kludge:

1) try to download new patches every night. Most of the nights all patch downloads will be skipped because those patches already exists on my UMDS

2) whenever new patches are released and downloaded as scheduled, after that I'll remove all of those metadata files and try to download patches again. By doing this, all patch downloads will still be skipped but the metadata files will be updated. 

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SITSS
Contributor
Contributor

Had the same issue and it doesn't matter if it's the windows or linux umds and it's been persistent since 6.5 right up to 7.0.  Wound up just deleting the whole lot and starting over since it's only a few GB.  I get the impression that offline updates don't get a lot of love.

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