While upgrade an ESXi 6 host for a customer last night, I ran into the following error when trying to patch via Update Manager:
“No image profile is found on the host or image profile is empty. An image profile is required to install or remove VIBs. To install an image profile, use the esxcli image profile install command.”
I tried various things such as rebooting the host, and manually patching via esxcli. (See my previous post on patching via CLI) but nothing seemed to work.
The server was a Dell R620, and after some searching, I found that it had a corrupt profile image. This can be fixed by replacing the corrupt image file and replacing with a known good one from another host. (The hosts dont have to be the same server version, but I would try to keep to same CPU families (Intel vs AMD). Here is how to do it.
- On the working ESXi host, copy the following image file: imgdb.tgz
cp /bootbank/imgdb.tgz /vmfs/volumes/<An Accessible LUN> - On the corrupt host, copy the file imgdb.tgz from the working host to /tmp:
cp /vmfs/volumes/<An Accessible LUN>/imgdb.tgz /tmp - Change Directories to /tmp
cd /tmp - Extract file you just copied
tar -xzf imgdb.tgz - Copy the working profile files to the profile directory
cp /tmp/var/db/esximg/profiles/* /var/db/esximg/profiles/ - Copy the working VIBs to the VIB repository
cp /tmp/var/db/esximg/vibs/* /var/db/esximg/vibs/ - Remove the corrupt imgdb.tgz from the bootbank
rm /bootbank/imgdb.tgz - Move the working copy of imgdb.tgz into the bootbank
cp /tmp/imgdb.tgz /bootbank/ - Make Config Backup
/sbin/auto-backup.sh - Reboot the host
reboot - Update host using Update Manager again