In ESXi 5.5 host gets disconnected from the vCenter randomly with vpxa crashing

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• ESXi host gets disconnected from the vCenter, vpxa crashes creating vpxa-worker dump.
• Crash during attempt to free unallocated memory in case of NFC Session initiation failure.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5

Resolution

This is a known issue with ESXi 5.5.

Currently, there is no solution.

Workaround:
To workaround this issue, upgrade to ESXi 6.x available at VMware Download. 

Additional Information

In vpxa-worker-zdump.000 you will see entries similar to,

Program terminated with signal 6, Aborted.:
     #0  0x172f5092 in _dl_sysinfo_int80 () from /tmp/debug-uw.uYsJvYPk/lib/ld-linux.so.2
     #1  0x1bf4ace5 in raise (sig=6) at ../nptl/sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/raise.c:67
     #2  0x1bf4c523 in abort () at abort.c:92
     #3  0x1796cc78 in Vmacore::System::SignalTerminateHandler (info=0x62e4036c, ctx=0x62e403f0) at bora/vim/lib/vmacore/posix/defSigHandlers.cpp:65
     #4  0x0038f002 in ?? ()
     #5  0x1bf90198 in _int_free (av=0x1c07d400, p=0x62e403f0, have_lock=0) at malloc.c:4977
     #6  0x16f348c6 in NfcFssrvrDDBGet (session=0x1ff03580, msg=<value optimized out>) at bora/lib/nfclib/nfcFssrvr.c:5793
     #7  0x16f378c6 in NfcFssrvrProcessMsg (session=0x1ff03580, msg=0x62e407f3, done=0x62e4096d "") at bora/lib/nfclib/nfcFssrvr.c:3538
     #8  0x16f2750b in NfcServerProcessClientMsg (session=0x1ff03580, done=0x62e4096d "", progressCB=0x16ee7530 <VpxNfcServer::UpdateProgressCB(void*, int)>, cbData=0x0) at bora/lib/nfclib/nfcLib.c:1842
     #9  0x16f288b5 in NfcServerLoop (session=0x1ff03580, progressCB=0x16ee7530 <VpxNfcServer::UpdateProgressCB(void*, int)>, cbData=0x0) at bora/lib/nfclib/nfcLib.c:2117
     #10 0x16f289be in Nfc_AuthdServerLoop (session=0x1ff03580, c=0x1fee25f8, progressCB=0x16ee7530 <VpxNfcServer::UpdateProgressCB(void*, int)>, progCbData=0x0) at bora/lib/nfclib/nfcLib.c:7621
     #11 0x16ee9b3d in VpxNfcServer::StartWork (this=0x1ff5ae30) at bora/vpx/provisioning/vpxNfcServer.cpp:535
     #12 0x16e9860d in VpxLRO::PreAndBodyStartWork (lro=0x1ff5ae30) at bora/vpx/common/vpxLro.cpp:2058
     #13 0x16e8bec1 in operator()<void (*)(VpxLRO*), boost::_bi::list0> (function_obj_ptr=...) at compcache/boost1470_lin32_gcc443/ob-1100386/linux/include/boost/bind/bind.hpp:253
     #14 operator() (function_obj_ptr=...) at compcache/boost1470_lin32_gcc443/ob-1100386/linux/include/boost/bind/bind_template.hpp:20