vmkctl.HostCtlException Unable to load module /usr/lib/vmware/vkmod/vmfs3: Failure

[jbo5112]

When I try to install VMware ESXi 4.1 from CD onto our server at our office, it fails with the error "vmkctl.HostCtlException Unable to load module /usr/lib/vmware/vkmod/vmfs3: Failure". I get as far as accepting the license and seeing a progress bar move across the screen, but as the bar finishes, it dies.

The server is a PC with a Gigabyte P45 based (ICH10) motherboard and Intel Q9550 (45nm Core 2 Quad). The BIOS has settings to turn AHCI on and off, as well as switching ports 0-3 between native and legacy mode. I have tried all combinations, and none of them work. If I turn of AHCI, the install CD often does not boot at all, just giving me a disk error.

I was switching from VMware Server to ESXi because Server 2.0 only has a non-functioning web interface, with well documented fatal bugs. However, it's beginning to look like the better option of the two. I may have to abandon VMware.

[MauroBonder]

you are check the release notes : http://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere4/doc/vsp_esxi41_vc41_rel_notes.html

have a follow comments Future releases of VMware vSphere might not support VMFS version 2

(VMFS2). VMware recommends upgrading or migrating to VMFS version 3 or

later. See the vSphere Upgrade Guide.

*If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful"*

[jbo5112]

VMFS 3 isn't loading for me to run the installer. I was wrong about when it crashes. It makes it through a yellow and grey screen, except it flashes some red writing up before it very quickly disappears. After that I choose to install and directly after I accept the licence agreement, it crashes with the error message. I have no previous version of this installed and no vmfs disks.

I downloaded the previous version of ESXi to try it, but it just tells me that it doesn't support my network card. Since I don't get any such warnings on 4.1, I assume all of my hardware is supported. I've even checked the md5sum of the 4.1 iso image and had nero verify the burned

image. I'm out of ideas.

[jbo5112]

If you look at the getting started document (here), then under the install ESXi section, it's crashing between step 4, accepting the licence agreement, and step 5, select an install disk.

[GeneralMandible]

I am running into the exact same problem with a new Dell Optiplex 980. I've tried several things with no luck.

[DSTAVERT]

GeneralMandible

Please post your own question especially since your hardware is different.

[DSTAVERT]

If this is a production server then I would find supported hardware. ESX(i) is very demanding of hardware. Installing to a desktop class motherboard is very seldom successful without a lot of work. The difficulties mostly come from the embedded components, NICs, disk controllers etc. Sometimes it is possible to bypass some of the issues with BIOS changes or disabling and replacing embedded components with supported components. You can try installing ESXi to a USB stick. It is a directly supported install option using the installer CD.

If this is testing, learning etc. then have a look at http://vm-help.com for possible unsupported solutions.

[jbo5112]

It's not a production system. VMware isn't fast/powerful enough for our production systems. Also, I don't see a problem with someone posting in the same forum conversation about the same problem. There is almost nothing on the internet about this, so I'm glad I'm not alone.

As for installing it to a usb disk, I cannot get to the point where it asks me for a disk to install to. ESXi 4.0 U1 aborts earlier saying the NIC is unsupported, so that seems to be supported. SATA is handled via AHCI, which I saw it load the driver for, so I'm covered there. I suppose the problem could be the PATA controller, which has the DVD drive connected to it. Since Intel doesn't support PATA on their chipsets, the controller can't be as standard as everything else. Also, it would make sense for the system to be unable to read drivers from the CD without drivers to access the disk. I'll have to see if I can dig up a SATA CD/DVD drive, or find a work around. I don't want to buy a new DVD drive without knowing for sure what the problem is.

[jbo5112]

It looks like it was the PATA controller. To install it, I installed VMware Plater on another machine that would support 64-bit guests. Then, I set up a virtual machine to install ESXi to. Inside the virtual machine, I installed it to a USB device. It boots fine now. It looks like the onboard NIC is still unsupported, but that's a different issue. This one is solved.

[GeneralMandible]

Seems like this would be a bug in the installation. I would think that PATA just wouldn't work, not crash the install. I have another machine that has PATA and ESXi installs fine.

[DSTAVERT]

Also, I don't see a problem with someone posting in the same forum conversation about the same problem. There is almost nothing on the internet about this, so I'm glad I'm not alone.

The problem with two people posting (especially with different hardware) is that solutions can be different. Two setups are seldom identical. Applying the wrong solution can be detrimental.

[PiccoloSan]

I have 2 brand new workstations:

DELL T3500, XEON E5630, 12 GB RAM, SATA HD Drives, SATA CD Drive

DELL T5500, 2 x XEON E5630, 24 GB RAM, DELL SAS 6/iR Controller, SAS HD Drives, SATA CD Drive

As a long time user of VMware products (WorkStation, Server & Player), I wanted to move to the next level with ESXi.

But attempting to install the latest version 4.1 (VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.1.0-260247.x86_64.iso) fails on both machines with the mentionned error

vmkctl.HostCtlException Unable to load module /usr/lib/vmware/vkmod/vmfs3: Failure

And I feel like this is not related to PATA. I can't even disable it anyway.

Is there a more formal way to escalate this issue directly to VMware ?

Because now I am stuck in my deployment project

Please advise.

Thanks.

[HonorableJoel]

Having exactly same issue with a different config :

ESXi : V4.1

Motherboard : Asus M3A78-EM BIOS_V 2401

CPU : AMD Athlon x2 64 7550

or

AMD Athlon x4 9500

Using PATA for HDD and DVD

LSI SCSI 320 not yet tested.

I got the following message after accepting the cluff .

"vmkctl.HostCtlException Unable to load module /usr/lib/vmware/vkmod/vmfs3: Failure"

And red writing up appear quickly before the cluff.

Few peoples make this board work by disabling the C1E in CPU settings in the bios but mine still not able to get trough the installation of ESXi.

[jbo5112]

JMIcron controllers, which is what's in the system, are common enough that I would call it a bug. The problem is that without the driver the PATA doesn't work, but it is needed for reading/copying the files off of the PATA DVD drive. The boot loader reads part of the system, but beyond that, drivers are needed. No drivers, no file access, program requiring them crashes. That's basically the way Linux works without drivers for your disk controller. I think windows asks you to inser the disk, gives you a blue screen or something. If they had better software, it would tell me what was unsupported instead of just blowing up though.

If I had a SATA DVD drive, it would just install. Unfortunately, my SATA drive died and the company doesn't have one available.

[PiccoloSan]

thanks for the follow up.

However I confirm I have a SATA CD Drive, and it doesn't work better.

Is there way to capture the red message quickly displayed after the driver loading process (yellow dialog with progress bar) and the user choice menu (Cancel/Repair/Install) ?

Please advise.

[HonorableJoel]

No it seems that SATA DVD-Drive and sata Hard-Drive did not fix the problem. However, i used my digital camera to have a snapshot of the message that appear quickly before the cluff. Here what i got :

----

---

( In white )

VMware ESXi (VMkernel Release Build 260247)

System manufacturer System product Name

( In grey )

AMD Athlon(tm) 7550 Dual-Core Processor

3.7 GB Memory

(In red)

0:00:00:09.168 cpu1:4651)Util: 1116 : Failed trying to get a valid VMKernel MAC address : Failure. Various vmkernel susbsystems will provide lower quality of serv

0:00:00:13.010 cpu1:4676)Util: 1116 : Failed trying to get a valid VMKernel MAC address : Failure. Various vmkernel susbsystems will provide lower quality of serv

0:00:00:13.010 cpu1:4676)Mod : 4145 : Initialization of module lvmdriver failed

0:00:00:14.020 cpu0:4766)UWVMKSyscall : 2726 : There is no supported nic on this host.

0:00:00:18.000 cpu0:4932)Warning : Syslog not configured. Please check syslog options under Configuration.Software.Advanced Settings in vSphere Client

----

---

And i also tried with the version 4.0

The following screen appeared

----

---

ESXI 4.0 http://www.vmware.com

Copyright (c) 2007-2009 VMware, Inc.

• Failed to load tpm*

• Failed to load lvmdriver*

----

---

When looking on internet for the message given by the 4.0 version, many users are telling me that i do not have an NIC supported by VMware and WMware need to find one to give a proper ID to the system. If there is no supported nic the system give this kind of error. So I ordred an Intel pro/1000 CT card to see if it will fix my problem.

[PiccoloSan]

Excellent !

So as far I am concern, this points toward the Broadcom gigabit controller.

I know this is 57xx and I know ESXi does support many of them.

But I guess I have to find out exactly what is my model so I can double check.

Thanks for the assistance

[PiccoloSan]

Hi,

After double checking, I have confirmation that my 2 DELL computers (T3500 & T5500) are embedding a Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5761 Desktop/Mobile Gigabit Controller which is NOT supported by ESXi 4.1.

Sadly ESXi 4.1 is delivered with Broacom 'tg3' driver suite version 3.86.

Latest 'tg3' driver suite from Broadcom web site is 3.105h.

I will now investigate how to slipstream the updated driver into ESXi 4.1 installable binaries.

Any advice would be very appreciated

[jbo5112]

I don't know if this gives you the latest drivers, but it should work. Download the oem.tgz file at http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2002 (attached to second post). You might be able to replace the oem.tgz file on the CD with this one and be able to install, but I couldn't get that to work for me. Otherwise you'll have to use VMware Player (or something else) to install ESXi into a virtual environment, and replace the oem.tgz on the installed copy.

1) You can install it to a USB device (or I suppose nearly any bootable, removable device), then use the device to boot ESXi on your server. (easy method)

2) You can install it to a 1GB virtual disk inside vmware, copy the disk image (real image of the virtual disk, not the virtual disk file) to your server's hard drive. You will lose everything on the server's target disk, and it formatted the empty space with VMFS for me. It might be easiest to use a Linux live CD inside the virtual machine to copy the oem.tgz file to the virtual disk before copying a disk image of ESXi. (harder method)

The file will be on partition 5 of the disk, which didn't show up when I plugged the USB device into my Windows XP computer, but was perfectly accessible from Linux. I can provide more detailed instructions for these steps, but if you run into any complications with this, you should use the forums at vm-help.com. It's more geared toward doing unsupported operations. There are other supported devices here. I personally think ESXi should come with more drivers. On Ubuntu 10.04, it only takes up about 80MB disk space for all the device drivers in the kernel.

[HonorableJoel]

I received my intel nic, installed it in my pc and the problem was gone. I completed the installation but now i'm trying to make the onboard nic work. (Realtek r8168) of an Asus M3A78-EM. If anyone solved this kind of onboard nic problem, please share your knowledge !!!