Upgrade of vCenter from 8.0U2b to 8.0U3d is failing due to vsm service failing to start.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vCenter Server 8.0

Issue/Introduction

/var/log/vmware/applmgmt/PatchRunner.log shows the vsm failure:

YYYY-MM-DDTxx:yy:zz.834Z last_component: Error: Failed to start services in profile ALL. RC=2, stderr=Failed to start vsm services. Error: Service crashed while starting , stderr=Service-control failed. Error: Failed to start services in profile ALL. RC=2, stderr=Failed to start vsm services. Error: Service crashed while starting.  

YYYY-MM-DDTxx:yy:zz.853Z ERROR __main__ Patch vCSA failed 

 

 

Analysis of the vsm.log confirms a java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError, specifically indicating that the path intended for library extraction is "Not a directory".

• Log Evidence (vsm.log): The service failed during the Spring context initialization phase due to a bean creation error.
  YYYY-MM-DDTxx:yy:zz.034Z WARN ... Instantiation of bean failed; nested exception is java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: Failed to create temporary file for /com/sun/jna/linux-x86-64/libjnidispatch.so library: **Not a directory**
  
  
• Filesystem Discrepancy: In vCenter 8.0 Update 3, the service expects /var/log/vmware/vsm/.cache/JNA/temp/ to be a directory. However, file listing reveals a 1.2MB flat file named temp (a compressed vSAN log from Month YYYY) currently occupies that namespace.
  vsm% ls -l .cache/JNA/ -rw-r--r-- 1 vsm vsm 1213366  Month  4 YYYY **temp**
  
  
• Service Exit: Consequently, the VMware Service Lifecycle Manager (vMon) terminated the process with Exit Code 1.
  YYYY-MM-DDTxx:yy:zz.409Z Wa(03) host-4152920 <vsm> **Service exited. Exit code 1**

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 8.x

Cause

The vService Manager (VSM) service failed to initialize because a physical file exists at a location where the Java Native Access (JNA) library requires a directory to extract its native binaries.
This procedure follows the troubleshooting logic for JNA-related extraction failures in vSphere 8.x environments where the .cache directory becomes corrupted or occupied by orphaned log files.

Resolution

The conflicting file must be removed to allow the VSM service to successfully create the required directory structure and extract its dependencies.

• Step 1: Delete the conflicting file: rm /var/log/vmware/vsm/.cache/JNA/temp.
• Step 2: Restart the VSM service or retry the patching process.