Boot issues with VMA 4.1 on DL360 G5 with ESX 3.5u5

[ahoogerhuis]

I thought I'd add this one as a datapoint, as I've googled high and low without finding much relevant info.

We have a setup with two DL360 G5 running ESX 3.5u5 and all current patches as of christmas. For some reason the VMA 4.1 appliance will not boot on these machines. I have checked the BIOS for the VT/Nx setup, I have had the machines powered off and on, I have ran the vt.iso tool that confirms I'm all good. The machines have an up to date BIOS (and other firmware).

The kernel that VMA 4.1 ships with is buggy with regards to booting in 64-bit mode on ESX 3.5 (maybe other versions, haven't tested). On this set of hosts it does shortly after the GRUB boot loader kicks off the kernel.

The magic solution? Install the VMA on another host that works (I accidentally have a few G6's laying about), make sure you get yum to update CentOS kernel, and move it back onto the DL360 G5's. Works like a charm.

-A

[DSTAVERT]

I will submit this to the knowledgebase team for review.

[ahoogerhuis]

Thanks for the swift attention to this.

In general, someone should do an audit of the output of "yum update"; there looks like there must be a fair bit CVE-related, this is after all a full CentOS install, not a black box.

On my run it showed about 185 packages needing updates for various reasons.

-A

[DSTAVERT]

It isn't a full install and shouldn't be updated with yum. Use vma-update.