Hey folks,
Having a problem trying to scan and patch ESX 3.5 hosts using Update Manager 4.1. I was initially getting the problem on my trusty old update manager server and I re-installed the service on the actual vCenter server using a fresh DB to try and start from scratch.
I want to update some of the very old (rarely rebooted) standalone servers we have which are running ESX 3.5i with the patch which needs to be applied before June 1st. (http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=103000...)
Basically, when I scan an ESX 3.5i host it tells me that it can't find patch metadata and the scan fails. I can't import the two patches needed to apply the update from the link KB article above because again, update Update Manager tells me it's missing metadata when I try to do so.
Scanning and patching ESX4 hosts works fine.
If I look in my patch repository, under embedded esx, I can find an ESX3.5 folder. In there there's a contents.xml which lists 52 patches. The folder however only contains 14 subfolders - i.e. my fresh install of Update Manager has only downloaded 14 of the 52 patches it should have. When I do a manual scan and tail the esxupdate log file on the 3.5i server I can see that it's failing to download a load of files from the Update Manager server - which is prettymuch what I'm expecting because those files don't exist there.
I've tried editing the contents.xml to remove the non-existing update bundles, but it re-generates when you try and scan.
I've raised this with VMware support but the guy didn't seem to have run into it before. Anybody got any ideas how I can patch these machines?
