VMware: ESX 4.0 down after update: fsck.ext3: unable to resolve ‘uuid

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After upgrading the VMware ESX 4.0 host with VMware Update Manager I received in the boot loader a few errors:

fsc.ext3: Unable to resolve ‘UUID=xxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx’
*** An error occurred during the file system check.
*** Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot
*** when you leave the shell.

To resolve this issue:

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– Login with Root credentials

Error warnings:

fsck.ext3: Unable to resolve ‘UUID=7d6111a3-d848-4e18-88e3-46a66912f8e6’

fsck.ext3: Unable to resolve ‘UUID=b07fd5a0-4a19-445d-adae-3b3679b5be3b’

fsck.ext3: Unable to resolve ‘UUID=b2ac1406-2dc1-4d4a-8649-0072389978ab’

Edit file /var/fstab/ by using VI of NANO

– nano /var/fstab/

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Identify that the the UUID reported in the error message corresponds to to error reporting, and edit those with a # parameter

#fsck.ext3: Unable to resolve ‘UUID=7d6111a3-d848-4e18-88e3-46a66912f8e6’

#fsck.ext3: Unable to resolve ‘UUID=b07fd5a0-4a19-445d-adae-3b3679b5be3b’

#fsck.ext3: Unable to resolve ‘UUID=b2ac1406-2dc1-4d4a-8649-0072389978ab’

Little note:

By saving the file I received: “You cannot save change to the file as the filesystem is read only”

To remount the file for Read Write access give the following command:

mount -o remount,rw /

Try again to edit /etc/fstab/

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After reboot:

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More information: VMware

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9 thoughts on “VMware: ESX 4.0 down after update: fsck.ext3: unable to resolve ‘uuid

  1. To fix this you have to find out which partition is the original partition. i had this issue with the partition /esx3-installation/var/log. so i will describe how i’ve solved it whis this partition.

    1. do the workaround described by Sander Daems. So your system can boot again
    2. find out which not mounted partitions are ext3 partitions

    i did this by list all disk uuids and grep all uuids which could be mounted successfully (in /etc/fstab) and then I inverted the selection

    ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid | grep -vE “c7ab4694-eeac-412a-8447-2d50ef6aadb2|9def7506-c031-49db-9828-7d30f4ac96a7|cc6010de-67ba-4cd2-b375-4eb8886cbc37|e9b4fb84-c742-401c-b997-253c5b1715dc|cc6010de-67ba-4cd2-b375-4eb8886cbc37”

    You’ll get a relatively long list with partitions. now check those partitions with rrwal uuids with fsck.ext3 to check if the partitions are valid ext3 partitions.

    lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Mar 31 18:35 005A15AE5A15A188 -> ../../sdaf1
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Mar 31 18:35 0068190A6818FFD8 -> ../../sdac1
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Mar 31 18:35 04382EB0382EA0A2 -> ../../sdad1
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Mar 31 18:35 0C143E1E143E0B6A -> ../../sdal1
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Mar 31 18:35 10F60CF3F60CDB3C -> ../../sdbl1
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Mar 31 18:35 13868988-531c-4b06-8d22-87b50d931c56 -> ../../sdf3
    ….
    ….

    3. If they are valid ext3 partitions mount every partition and check its content until you got the right one.
    mkdir /tmp/mount
    mount -t ext3 -o defaults /dev/sdf3
    ls -l /tmp/mount

    4. if you got the right partition change the uuid in the /etc/fstab to the uuid in /dev/disk/by-uuid

    5. reboot and pray 😉

  2. this worked well for me thanks.. I didn’t need to change uuid in fstab when i ran fdisk on the device, claimed lable was in invalid and it rewrote the label and then I could umount and rmount.

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