VMware Tools and LSI SAS hot add issues when you run Debian 9.5.0 on ESXi Host 6.0 GA

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
Issue 1

• Bundled VMware Tools cannot start after power off & power on a Debian 9.5.0 VM with installation of it on ESXi 6.0 GA.
• After you install the bundled VMware Tools with version 9.10.0 in Debian 9.5.0 VM on ESXi 6.0GA host, if powered off and powered on the VM, the VMware Tools cannot start.
• If you start it manually, you see this issue:

# systemctl restart vmtoolsd
Failed to restart vmtoolsd.service: Unit vmtoolsd.service not found.

• In the summary of the vSphere web client, it also shown as “Not run, version: 9536”.

Issue 2

• GuestInfo on ESXi 6.0GA host side is not correct after install VMware Tools in Debian 9.5.0.
• For default open-vm-tools-10.1.5, VMware Tar tools 10.3.5 & 10.4.0, they are shown as follows on ESXi Host Side:

============================
......
   guestId = "",
   guestFamily = "otherGuestFamily",
   guestFullName = "Linux 4.9.0-7-amd64 Debian GNU/Linux 9.5 (stretch)",
 
But for the bundled VMware Tools (version:9.10.0) is shown as follows on ESXi Host Side.
===============================
......
   guestId = "other3xLinuxGuest",
   guestFamily = "linuxGuest",
   guestFullName = "Other 3.x Linux (32-bit)",
 
On ESXi 67U1, VMware Tools 10.4.0 is shown as follows. This is the expect result.
===============================
......
   guestId = "debian9_64Guest",
   guestFamily = "linuxGuest",
   guestFullName = "Debian GNU/Linux 9 (64-bit)",

Issue 3

• LSI Logic SAS hot adding hard disk failed in Debian 9.5.0 64bit, but is OK in Debian 9.5.0 32bit
• It has no problem after hot adding a LSI Logic SAS controller, dmesg will report the following message after hot adding a new hard disk attach to it.

============================
……
[ 1054.445257] 0 pages HighMem/MovableOnly
[ 1054.445258] 9580 pages reserved
[ 1054.445259] 0 pages hwpoisoned
[ 1054.445264] mptbase: ioc1: ERROR - Unable to allocate Reply, Request, Chain Buffers!
[ 1054.445277] mptbase: ioc1: ERROR - didn't initialize properly! (-3)
[ 1054.446095] mptsas: probe of 0000:03:00.0 failed with error -3
[ 1079.624585] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0
[ 1079.624590] floppy: error -5 while reading block 0
[ 1079.648511] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0
[ 1079.648516] floppy: error -5 while reading block 0

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0

Cause

• For [Issue 1], it does not have Debian 9.x in Guest OS version list when fresh install. We select Debian 8.x or other linux instead of it.
• For [Issue 2], it will be fixed by GuestInfo new feature.
• For [Issue 3], it is fixed in 6.5U2 and later branch.

Resolution

To resolve this issue:

• For [Issue 1], use the default open-vm-tools, or higher VMware tools.
• For [Issue 2], This is a known issue affecting ESXi 6.0.x. VMware is aware of this issue and working to resolve this in a future release.
• For [Issue 3], Upgrade to 6.5U2 and later ESXi version.