Patching ESXi by command line fails with error: Could not download from depot at zip:/var/log/vmware/VMware-ESXi-X-version-depot.zip. No such file or directory or There is no item named

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Updating VMware ESXi host from cli fails with error similar to below:

[MetadataDownloadError]
Could not download from depot at zip:/var/log/vmware/VMware-ESXi-<version>-<build>-depot.zip?index.xml, skipping (('zip:/var/log/vmware/VMware-ESXi-<version>-<build>-depot.zip?index.xml', '', "Error extracting index.xml from var/log/vmware/VMware-ESXi-<version>-<build>-depot.zip: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/var/log/vmware/VMware-ESXi-<version>-<build>-depot.zip'") ) url = zip:/var/log/vmware/VMware-ESXi-8.0U3d-24585383-depot.zip?index.xml

Environment

VMware ESXi 7.x
VMware ESXi 8.x

Cause

Potential causes can include below:

• Using only filename instead of the complete path.

• Using numbers when specifying ESXi versions, for example ESXi 8.O3 will give an error because instead of number "0" you are using letter "O".

• Error occurs during installation if the command specified direct path to a compressed archive.

 

Resolution

• Use the proper file name with version along with the complete file path as show in below command:

  esxcli software profile update -p name_of_the_Image_Profile -d /vmfs/volumes/Datastore/DirectoryName/PatchName.zip

  Please refer to Patching ESXi host using Command Line for more details.

• For Driver upgrade use below command to install,

  esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/Datastore/DirectoryName/PatchName(Decompressed file name)
  
  Download and install async drivers in VMware ESXi