Patching fails due to missing reserved VIBs in /var/vmware/lifecycle/hostSeed/reservedVibs

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• The patching process is not going through either from Update Manager or through the CLI.
  
  
• On the CLI, the attempt fails with a FileNotFoundError pointing to the missing reserved VIBs directory.

[FileNotFoundError]

[Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/var/vmware/lifecycle/hostSeed/reservedVibs'

For further details, please refer to the log file.

• Update Manager also stops with the error message below:

An error occurred during host configuration.

Environment

7.0 U3

Cause

• The reserved VIBs under /var/vmware/lifecycle/hostSeed/reservedVibs are not available on this host.
  
  
• When trying to recreate the files, the system shows them as "already present", which points to a corruption on the host file system.

Resolution

• To fix this issue, remove the host from the cluster, assign a fresh boot LUN, and reinstall ESXi.

This clean installation brings back the missing or corrupted reserved VIBs and allows patching to complete successfully.