esx 3.5 - esxtop can't display network stats

[wilsifer]

Runng ESX 3.5 Update 1 with all the latest patches (as of June 3rd). Whenever I run esxtop and try to display network statistics, the process just quits. I can see cpu, memory, and disk stats just fine, but as soon as I hit "n", it exits out of the utility with an error message of "VMEsxtop_ServerInitStats() failed.

Does anyone have a clue what's happening?

[mfriedl]

Hello,

I've got the same problem at 4 customer sites mainly with IBM x3650 Servers. So I open a support call last week and after 2 Days we closed the case with the words:

"... The issue you are having has already been filled in the internal problem database under the private bug id PR#293351. This PR is going to be fixed in ESX 3.5 update 2, that soon is going to be released."

So I think we should lay back and wait

[acsulli]

We've been having some "datacenter issues" the last few days, so I haven't had a chance to test yet. I should be able to programmatically apply the patches tomorrow and, hopefully, determine which is the problem.

[acsulli]

I applied these patches, in this order, after which, the networking portion of esxtop failed...

ESX350-20080408-BG (no reboot required) (esxtop working normally)

ESX350-20080407-BG (reboot performed) (esxtop working normally)

ESX350-200805502-BG (no reboot required) (esxtop working normally)

ESX350-200805501-BG (reboot) (esxtop failed)

After the host recovered from the reboot after ESX350-200805501-BG was when the networking portion of esxtop failed.

[hank-ger]

Bin bis zum 21.07.08 nicht im Büro, in dringenden Fällen wenden Sie sich bitte an André Chlupac (7015).

Ihre E-Mail wird nicht weitergeleitet.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Henry Langner

[mdina]

good article. my vmware rep did not even know about this as he was telling me to run this command. Thanks for the tip.

[IB_IT]

adding to this post as I am having same issue on SunFire x4200 M2.

[acsulli]

I think I have it narrowed down to a specific RPM, and maybe specific file...

Inside of update ESX350-200805501-BG there are several RPMs, six to be exact. One of those, VMware-esx-apps-3.5.0-95350.i386.rpm, contains the file libvmksysinfo.so. If you check the dynamic linking of the esxtop binary ("ldd /usr/bin/esxtop"), libvmksysinfo.so is the only linked file listed that was updated.

Unfortunately, I no longer have an unpatched system that I can pull the old binary from and test to see if it will still work. Even if I could do that, I don't know what the impact to other processes would be, as I'm guessing by the name, that library is used somewhat frequently for getting information about/from the vKernel.

Additionally, there are updates that are dependent on 200805501 being installed - ESX350-200806401-BG and ESX350-200806405-BG

[BenConrad]

Nice work

[bernsian]

I just got off the phone with support. This is a known bug with a post update 1 package. The fix is supposed to be released the end of the month.

[BenConrad]

So ESX 3.5 U2 is out but I've not seen any references to this issue being fixed. I opened up a SR to see if it's fixed as they said it would be...

I can't update in my test lab as I have to keep it at 3.5 U1 for now. Can anybody test 3.5 U2 in their lab (or production ) to see if this is fixed?

Ben

[acsulli]

It is indeed fixed with Update 2. I'm not sure exactly which of the updates fixes it...I didn't get a chance to apply updates one at a time, but it is fixed.