ESXi consoles (SSH and Lights Out Management) fail to connect or flicker with black screens.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• SSH connections immediately fail as if SSH is not running, though the DCUI indicates it is. 
• Accessing a console such as iLO, iDRAC, or ALT+F1 from DCUI results in a flickering black screen that seems to show some text very briefly.
  • If the text can be captured it may indicate an error similar to "getty: cannot open ‘/dev/null/ no such file or directory".
• If a console is established before the issue starts, it is observed that /dev/null is no longer present in the ESXi Operating System. 
  
  
  
  
• The ESXi hosts' hostd.log shows one more more VM's have been configured with their swap location pointing to /dev/null. 
  
  2026-02-19T08:07:10.001Z Wa(164) Hostd[2104153]: -->       (vim.option.OptionValue) {
2026-02-19T08:07:10.001Z Wa(164) Hostd[2104153]: -->          key = "sched.swap.derivedName", 
2026-02-19T08:07:10.001Z Wa(164) Hostd[2104153]: -->          value = "/dev/null"
2026-02-19T08:07:10.001Z Wa(164) Hostd[2104153]: -->       }, 
  
  
• Later, when such a VM is deleted, may see the following log print in hostd.log showing /dev/null getting removed as well. 
  
  2026-02-19T08:06:47.419Z In(166) Hostd[2104179]: [Originator@6876 sub=Libs opID=56b64e8e-##-#### sid=52###51f user=vpxuser:VSPHERE.LOCAL\<username>] SNAPSHOT: SnapshotDeleteFile deleted '/dev/null'.
   
• This state with /dev/null having been deleted can lead to other symptoms occurring, such as vSAN potentially becoming unhealthy. 

Environment

VMware ESXi 

Cause

This situation can occur if VM's are deployed with swap location pointing to /dev/null, which is then later deleting resulting in /dev/null also being deleted along with the VM. 

Resolution

This issue is currently being reviewed by ESXi engineering. 

Workaround

• Revert ESXi to the previous version to boot it up from the altbootbank to restore /dev/null - Reverting to a previous version of ESXi 6.x, 7.x or 8.x.