Unable to view the complete GID in esxtop if it has more than 7 characters

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

You are running esxtop to analyze performance issue of a particular virtual machine and cannot expand GID.

Environment

VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware ESX 4.0.x

Resolution

This is by design of the esxtop command. In vSphere 4.x, there is a maximum character limit of Seven (7) characters in the esxtop expand command. In vSphere 5.x, this maximum was increased to a limit of Eight (8) characters in the esxtop expand command.

The workaround this issue, use the Numeric Keypad (numpad). Press 2 or 8 on the Numeric Keypad to move up and down the selected group. Press 6 to expand the selected group.