ESXi 5.0 esxcli commands are not immediately available

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• After installing a package to a vSphere 5.0 host that contains one more more esxcli commands, those commands are not immediately visible on the system or available for execution.
• Attempting to execute the newly installed command on the host where the package has been installed fails.
• You see the error:
  
  Error: Unknown command or namespace
  
  
• This issue affects all package types, including those marked as live-installable.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0

Resolution

To resolve this issue, restart the host or restart the VMware hostd agent.

When you restart the host agent, the newly installed commands are detected and made available. In addition, the host is disconnected from vCenter Server, which interrupts and cancels operations that are being executed on the host via vSphere APIs. If your host is in lockdown mode, you need to temporarily exit lockdown mode before restarting the hostd agent. Do not restart the VMware host agent while other management operations are occurring.

To restart the VMware host agent:

1. Enable the local ESXi shell or SSH access. For more information, see Using Tech Support Mode in ESXi 4.1 and ESXi 5.0 (1017910).
2. From the ESXi shell, run the command:
   
   /etc/init.d/hostd restart
   
   After 60 seconds, the newly installed esxcli commands are available.

Additional Information

Using Tech Support Mode in ESXi 4.1, ESXi 5.x, and ESXi 6.x