VLSR Appliance Hangs on "Running Pre-Installation Checks" During Upgrade to Protection and Recovery 9.1

Products

VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

When attempting an in-place upgrade from VMware Live Recovery (VLR/VLSR) 9.0.x to Protection and Recovery 9.1, the process encounters the following symptoms:

1. The appliance upgrade progress remains stuck on "running pre-installation checks" for approximately one hour before timing out.

2. The upgrade fails with the following error in the user interface:

ERROR
Operation Failed
A general system error occurred: N7Vmacore15SystemExceptionE Is a directory (21)
Operation ID: de23bb43-fee6-4244-b046-##########

Environment

Source Versions: VMware Live Recovery 9.0.3, 24693627 through VMware Live Site Recovery 9.0.5.1, 25360383

Target Version: Protection and Recovery 9.1, 25367487

Cause

During the pre-upgrade phase, the upgrade script executes package cleanup operations using the Tiny Dandified YUM (tdnf) package manager.

If the appliance has photon-updates.repo enabled, tdnf attempts to connect to remote Broadcom/VMware repositories to ensure local packages are fully up to date. If the appliance lacks direct internet access to reach packages-prod.broadcom.com, the command times out.

Alternatively, if a connection is established, tdnf may attempt to pull down alternative package dependencies to satisfy its update logic. This alters the expected base state of the appliance and causes the pre-installation check script to fail.

Checking the /opt/vmware/var/log/preupdatelog file on the appliance reveals a network timeout while attempting to synchronize Photon OS repository metadata:

Refreshing metadata for: 'VMware Photon Linux 5.0 (x86_64) Updates'
retrying 1/10
retrying 2/10
retrying 3/10
retrying 4/10
retrying 5/10
retrying 6/10
retrying 7/10
retrying 8/10
retrying 9/10
retrying 10/10
Error(1229) : Timeout was reached
Error: Failed to synchronize cache for repo 'VMware Photon Linux 5.0 (x86_64) Updates'
Disabling Repo: 'VMware Photon Linux 5.0 (x86_64) Updates'

Resolution

The workaround for this issue is to temporarily disable the online Photon OS update repository before initiating the upgrade. This restricts tdnf to the local installation media included with the upgrade bundle.

NOTE: Take a standard virtual machine snapshot of the VLSR Appliance before proceeding.

A: Modify the Repository Configuration

1. Log into the VLSR Appliance via SSH as the admin user, then switch to root:

su -

2. Navigate to the repository configuration directory:

cd /etc/yum.repos.d

3. Verify which repositories are currently enabled by running:

grep enabled *

(Typically, you will see photon-updates.repo:enabled=1 while the others are set to 0.)

Open the photon-updates.repo file using the vi editor:
```
vi photon-updates.repo
```

Locate the enabled=1 line and change it to enabled=0. The file contents should look like this:

[photon-updates]
name=VMware Photon Linux $releasever ($basearch) Updates
baseurl=https://packages-prod.broadcom.com/photon/$releasever/photon_updates_$releasever_$basearch
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/VMWARE-RPM-GPG-KEY file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/VMWARE-RPM-GPG-KEY-4096
gpgcheck=1
enabled=0
skip_if_unavailable=1 

Save the changes and exit the editor (:wq!). Note: An appliance reboot is not required.

B: Proceed with the Upgrade

Once the repository is disabled, follow the standard upgrade procedures outlined in the official Broadcom Technical Documentation:

For standard upgrades: Refer to Update the Protection and Recovery Appliance.

For in-place updates from 9.0.4.x or later: If your specific version path requires manual package deployment, refer to Upgrade the Linux RPM of the Protection and Recovery Appliance.
Broadcom Engineering is aware of this issue and it will be fixed in the future releases of Protection & Recovery Softwares.