I, like many before, are at that lovely point of trying to apply a profile update to a standalone ESXi 6.7 host:
[root@:~] esxcli software profile install -p ESXi-6.7.0-20190504001-standard -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml [OSError] [Errno 28] No space left on device Please refer to the log file for more details.
Joy. Suggested solutions include downloading the latest archive and applying that - the problem with is it's not a profile update, and won't patch everything previous, just that individual update. And of course ensuring Swap is enabled in the UI and backed by a datastore with an unreasonable amount of spare space.
I'd really like to solve this problem once and for-all, is it a bug?
The only log file that appears to have been written to is /var/log/esxcli, which just contains the same error. Taking the error at face value, here is my df output:
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on VMFS-5 447.0G 156.0G 291.0G 35% /vmfs/volumes/datastore2 VMFS-5 104.2G 3.9G 100.3G 4% /vmfs/volumes/datastore1 vfat 249.7M 146.9M 102.8M 59% /vmfs/volumes/e8401f77-0af539dc-3dd0-fd40b7891bcd vfat 249.7M 141.7M 108.0M 57% /vmfs/volumes/ddbd4778-d8ee947a-2427-f7e19605a5cd vfat 4.0G 25.4M 4.0G 1% /vmfs/volumes/5ae9a055-f7f64e90-4be7-6cb31131dc38 vfat 285.8M 174.2M 111.6M 61% /vmfs/volumes/52d45f44-fea28213-783c-000c295b0bf8
Standard partition layout for a ESXi installation, with only the out-of-the-box tiny partitions looking remotely tight on space (but what can you do about that?).
I tried running the command whilst monitoring disk usage, to see if one was steadily being filled before being rolled back, but nope, no change.
I am at a bit of a loss here to what's causing the problem which seems to impact so many people at random, and how to troubleshoot / permanently resolve this without hacks and workarounds. Are there any gurus frequenting this forum who could shed some light on this baffling issue?