Upgrading ESX host to update 4 fails with an error "Failed to download offline bundle .zip."

[Vanhale]

I am running below command to update the ESX host. It fails with an error. I used the same command to update the first host in the same cluster and that worked. Tried with others and it fails.

esxupdate --bundle=/vmfs/volumes/<Datastore Name>//update-from-esx4.0-4.0_update04.zip update
Encountered error BundleDownloadError:
The error data is:
   Url         - /vmfs/volumes/<Datastore Name>/update-from-
                 esx4.0-4.0_update04.zip
   Localfile   - /var/cache/esxupdate/bundle7107600307711814965/update-from-
                 esx4.0-4.0_update04.zip
   Message     - Remote file /vmfs/volumes/<Datastore Name>//update-from-
                 esx4.0-4.0_update04.zip does not exist.
   Errno       - 26
   Description - Failed to download offline bundle .zip.

Any Ideas?

[VTsukanov]

Try to install update from location /var/update and use prefix file:// , take a look at blog post Applying ESX4.0-4.0_update04 directly to an ESX host

[Vanhale]

Too good.. Works like a charm. My only worry is that we are running the update from the local storage of the ESX host.I have multiple ESX hosts and what that means is before performing the upgrade, i have to first copy it to the local storage and then perform the upgrade.

[VTsukanov · Accepted solution]

Try to first install the patch from shared datastore and only if an error occurs try to install it from a local. As I recall (we work with vSphere 5 for a long time), we were unable to find the reasons for which the update to ESX 4 is not installed from the shared datastore, it may be the level of patches, may be previous history of the host ...

[Vanhale]

It just surprises me that that i could update the first host using the shared datastore and then it didnt work for other hosts in the cluster. I was on VC update 1 when i updated the first host in the cluster as a check and it worked. AFter upgrading to VC update 4, esxupdate from datastore didnt work but i have a resolution now for your earlier post and that works.

[Vanhale]

One last question,

I have downloaded the lastest patch from the vmware site ESX400-201203001.zip from the vmware site Build number: 660575. Update was successfull. When i run vmware -v it gives me the output as VMware ESX 4.0.0 build-504850 and when i click on the ESX host from the vsphere client and go to summary it shows me ESX,4.0.0,660575. Shouldnt vmware -l have returned me the same output