Import offline bundle or sync operations may fail in vSphere Lifecycle Manager in vCenter Server Appliance 7.x/8.x

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware vCenter Server 7.0
• VMware vCenter Server 8.0

Issue/Introduction

• The content of the offline bundle does not show up in Lifecycle Manager.
• You see a message similar to:

A general system error occurred: Download patch definitions task failed while syncing depots. Error: 'integrity.fault.HostPatchInvalidVendorCode: Invalid vendor code CIS in patch metadata, another vendor code with different capitalization already exists in database. Check the Lifecycle Manager log files for more details.

• The Save or Validate operations with the image containing packages from Hardware Support Manager fail with a message similar to:
  
  Failed to fetch component information for hardware support package VMware ESXi 7.0 Upgrade Pack in the depot, Invalid hardware support spec specified in the draft
 
• Importing offline bundle into vSphere Lifecycle Manager fails through the vSphere Web Client.
• You see a message similar to:
  
  Error: 'integrity.fault.HostPatchInvalidVendorCode'

• In the /var/log/vmware/vmware-updatemgr/vum-server/vmware-vum-server-log4cpp.log file, you see a message similar to:
  
  [2020-04-16 19:25:07:881 'HostUpdateDepotManager' 139788413433600 ERROR]  [metadataCache, 319] Invalid vendor code: <VENDOR CODE>, this conflicts with the existing code: <vendor code>. Invalid code is from URL:https://hostupdate.domain.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/addon-main/addon/<VENDOR CODE>
[2020-04-16 19:25:07:884 'VciSigUpdateTask.SigUpdateTask{11}' 139788413433600 ERROR]  [vciSigUpdateTask, 427] Error download ESX 4x updates from https://hostupdate.domain.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/addon-main/vmw-depot-index.xml: <VENDOR CODE>

Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server Appliance 7.x
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 8.x

Cause

This issue occurs due to a mismatch in vendor codes (lower/upper case) in the online and offline content downloaded into the vSphere Lifecycle Manager. 

Resolution

To resolve this issue:

1. Connect to the vCenter Server Appliance through SSH.
   
   
2. Run this shell command to switch to the BASH Shell
3. Copy the script KB_78688_remove-addon.sh (or KB_78688_remove-addon_8.x.sh) to a location in the vCenter Server Appliance.
4. Change the permissions of the script by running this command:

chmod +500 KB_78688_remove-addon.sh
or
chmod +500 KB_78688_remove-addon_8.x.sh

     5. Execute the script by running this command:

./KB_78688_remove-addon.sh
or
./KB_78688_remove-addon_8.x.sh

      6. Re-sync the content download into vSphere Lifecycle Manager by selecting Home > Lifecycle Manager > Actions > Sync updates from the vSphere client