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

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 , 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" 

 

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.