Trend Micro DSVA error: dsvatool failed to config i/f (256)

I had an issue when during morning checks quite a few VMs reported “Communication Error”. On a close inspection all of them were running on a particular ESX host. DSVA’s status was “Component Update Failure”. Restart of the DSVA did not help. I vMotioned all VMs off that host and tried to deactivate DSVA but it failed. I also tried to re-activate DSVA and it got stuck on “Updating Components” again. When I rebooted DSVA, I completely lost communication to it. I noticed that it did not pickup DHCP address. When I tried to enable DHCP [X] and save Management Network Configuration, I got “dsvatool failed to config i/f (256)” error message:

I pressed OK, DSVA received DHCP address but Primary and Secondary DNS server IP addresses were blank. DSVA was rebooted again in a hope that it will get IP addresses properly but after the reboot it lost ALL settings, including the host name and no matter what I tried, configuration could not be saved.

Well, it is a good indication that the root partition was full.

1. Open DSVA console, press ALT-F2;
2. Login as dsva;
3. Check the filesystems:

   dsva@(none):~$ suso su
   dsva@(none):~$ df -k

   As you can see, DSVA’s host name is (none) – it completely lost its config
   

4. Check the size of the logs:

   cd /var/log
   ls -lah

   messages.1 and syslog.1 files are enormous!

   

5. Delete syslog.1 and messages.1

   dsva@(none):/var/log# rm syslog.1
   dsva@(none):/var/log# rm messages.1

   

6. Restart DSVA and reconfigure host name and IP address if needed;
7. Re-Activate DSVA.

Another battle with Trend Micro Deep Security is won!

UPDATE: Trend Micro published this blog post on the Technical Support portal under Solution ID 1095482.  Thank you, it is an honour!