The Diary of a Keen Upgrader

Today I am wearing my “Keen Upgrader” hat!

I have been upgrading my lab environment and got stuck with VMware vCenter Operations Manager upgrade.  The procedure is quite straight forward and is well documented.

The procedure consists of two steps (see here):

1. Upgrade vCenter Operations Manager vApp;
2. Upgrade the OS to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 to SPx.

I tried to upgrade vCenter Operations Manager from v. 5.8.3 to 5.8.4.  Yes…, I know,… Hence the “Keen Upgrader” badge… :)

The first step of the upgrade went well, no issues whatsoever but when I tried to upgrade the OS, it stopped straight after the launch without any errors or messages:

firstvm-external:/data # /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/user/conf/upgrade/va_sles11_spx_init.sh /data/VMware-vcops-SP3-2191616.pak
Started applying upgrade..
firstvm-external:/data #

That was odd!  Upon close inspection of the scripts, the issues has been identified!  vCenter Operations Manager v. 5.8.3 comes with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Patch 3 already installed and the OS upgrade is not required!

You can actually check current version of the OS by running the following command:

firstvm-external:~ # cat /etc/SuSE-release
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (x86_64)
VERSION = 11
PATCHLEVEL = 3

Here is what actually happened during the upgrade:

1. When you apply vCOPs vApp patch (as per upgrade procedure) it changes scripts:
   Old ones:

   rwxrwxrwx  1 root  root  1729 Nov 27  2013 va_sles11_sp2_common.sh
   -rwxrwxrwx  1 root  root  1091 Nov 27  2013 va_sles11_sp2_common_defs.sh
   -rwxrwxrwx  1 root  root  4174 Nov 27  2013 va_sles11_sp2_init.sh
   -rwxrwxrwx  1 root  root  1001 Nov 27  2013 va_sles11_sp2_postupgrade.sh
   -rwxrwxrwx  1 root  root  3504 Nov 27  2013 va_sles11_sp2_upgrade.sh
   -rwxrwxrwx  1 root  root   247 Nov 27  2013 va_sles11_sp2_upgrade_required.sh

   Replaced with:

   -rwxrwxrwx  1 admin admin 1956 Nov 13 14:02 va_sles11_spx_common.sh
   -rwx------  1 root  root  1947 Nov 13 13:51 va_sles11_spx_common.sh.old
   -rwxrwxrwx  1 admin admin  991 Oct 10 06:12 va_sles11_spx_common_defs.sh
   -rwxrwxrwx  1 admin admin 4337 Oct 10 06:12 va_sles11_spx_init.sh
   -rwxrwxrwx  1 admin admin 1425 Oct 10 06:12 va_sles11_spx_postupgrade.sh
   -rwxrwxrwx  1 admin admin 3695 Oct 10 06:12 va_sles11_spx_upgrade.sh
   -rwxrwxrwx  1 admin admin  247 Oct 10 06:12 va_sles11_spx_upgrade_required.sh

2. For the OS upgrade you launch: ‘./va_sles11_spx_init.sh /data/VMware-vcops-SP3-2191616.pak‘
   Then ‘va_sles11_spx_init.sh' calls ‘va_sles11_spx_common.sh':

   #Checks the SLES version to see if the upgrade is needed
   checkSLESversionAsString()
   {
       OS_MAJOR_VERSION=`awk '/^VERSION = /{print $NF}' /etc/SuSE-release`
       OS_SP_VERSION=`awk '/^PATCHLEVEL = /{print $NF}' /etc/SuSE-release`
       if expr match "$OS_MAJOR_VERSION" "11" > /dev/null; then
           if ( expr match "$OS_SP_VERSION" "1" || expr match "$OS_SP_VERSION" "2" ) > /dev/null; then
               return $SPx_UPGRADE_REQ
           else
               return $SPx_UPGRADE_NOT_REQ
           fi
       else
           return $SPx_UPGRADE_NOT_REQ
       fi
   }

3. And there is a procedure:

   log_and_echo()
   {
           log_info $1
   }

   in the old script the procedure is slightly different:

   log_and_echo()
   {
           log_info $1
           echo $1
   }

   The “echo $1” is missing!!!

4. When you add it back and run upgrade again you get:

   firstvm-external:/usr/lib/vmware-vcops/user/conf/upgrade # ./va_sles11_spx_init.sh /data/VMware-vcops-SP3-2191616.pak
   Started applying upgrade..
   SLES upgrade not required on Analytics VM hence skipping..

I hope you will find this entertaining! :)

I would like to thank Zbigniew ‘Ziggy’ Misiak for his help with the upgrade scripts!