vMotions fail with an error "A general system error occurred: Sandboxd call timed out"

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

• After an upgrade of ESXi hosts to 8.0.x, vMotions fail with an error "A general system error occurred: Sandboxd call timed out".
  
  
• In /var/run/log/hostd.log of ESXi host similar to below errors are seen
  yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss.us Wa(164) Hostd[2745240]: [Originator@6876 sub=IO.Connection] Failed to connect; <io_obj p:0x0000002c3a809660, h:60, <UNIX ''>, <UNIX 'vmwLocalSocketSandboxVapi'>>, e: 2(No such file or directory), duration: 0msec
yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss.us Wa(164) Hostd[2745240]: [Originator@6876 sub=HttpConnectionPool-000000] Failed to get pooled connection; <cs p:0000002c111aff00, PIPE:vmwLocalSocketSandboxVapi>, (null), duration: 0msec, N7Vmacore15SystemExceptionE(No such file or directory)


• In /var/run/log/sandboxd.log we see below entries
  yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss.us In(166) sandboxd[2098186]: --> [context]zKq7AVICAgAAAP////8Jc2FuZGJveGQAAOPJR2xpYnZtYWNvcmUuc28AAL4fPQBLLywAlDIsAB7bLADg/ywAO1BSAVJ4AGxpYnB0aHJlYWQuc28uMAACP1IPbGliYy5zby42AA==[/context]
yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss.us In(166) sandboxd[2098227]: [Originator@6876 sub=Default.HTTPService.HttpConnection] HTTP Connection has timed out while waiting for further requests; <io_obj p:0x000000c854a4d0f8, h:-1, <UNIX 'vmwLocalSocketSandboxVapi'>, <UNIX 'vmwLocalSocketSandboxVapi'>>, N7Vmacore16TimeoutExceptionE(Operation timed out: Stream: <io_obj p:0x000000c854a4d0f8, h:-1, <UNIX 'vmwLocalSocketSandboxVapi'>, <UNIX 'vmwLocalSocketSandboxVapi'>>, duration: 00:00:46.386261 (hh:mm:ss.us))
  
  
• Executing the below command shows service is off.
  cat chkconfig.db | grep sandboxd
/etc/init.d/sandboxd    off
  
  
• Executing  command shows below setting.
  grep backup /etc/inittab
::shutdown:/bin/backup.sh 1





Cause

Sandboxd service is not running. ConfigStore is in a state when 'backup.sh 1' and all future software changes were not recorded.

Resolution

This is a known issue and currently there is no resolution.

To workaround this issue perform the below steps

1.To start sandboxd run command
/etc/init.d/sandboxd start

2.To persist sandboxd change run command
/bin/chkconfig sandboxd on