PowerPath/VE: sfcbd daemon terminates after PowerPath 7.2 installation
Summary: sfcb daemon unexpectedly stops after PowerPath/VE 7.2 installation.
Symptoms
The following message is seen in syslog.log:
2021-08-12T04:08:41Z sfcb-ProviderManager[2102722]: handleSigChld:651662837504 provider terminated, pid=2110110, exit=0 signal=6
Cause
Resolution
Although provMemOveride:powerpath is already set to 240 MB in sfcb.cfg, memstat shows that only 70 MB was allocated to provMemOveride:powerpath. The fix consists of increasing the resource pool to the value it is supposed to have by adding a line at the end of the configuration file and by restarting wbem:
# echo "provMemOveride:powerpath=240,vmware_base=150" >> /etc/sfcb/sfcb.cfg
# /etc/init.d/sfcbd-watchdog restart
# esxcli system wbem set -e 0
# esxcli system wbem set -e 1
Note for ESXi 7.0 Update 2 up to ESXi 7.0 Update 3c: As mentioned in VMware article https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/82638, edits under /etc do not persist across reboot in ESXi 7.0 U2 and later. The following commands should be added in /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh above the "exit 0" statement:
echo "provMemOveride:powerpath=240,vmware_base=150" >> /etc/sfcb/sfcb.cfg
esxcli system wbem set -e 0
esxcli system wbem set -e 1
Instead of an echo command, we would rather expect a "esxcli system wbem set --rp-override="powerpath=240,vmware_base=150" command. We are using an "echo" command here because of an issue with the esxcli command in ESXi 7.0 U2.
Note for ESXi 7.0 Update 3d and above : according to https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/rn/vsphere-esxi-70u3d-release-notes.html, PR 2840405, the issue with the "esxcli system wbem set --rp-override" command is fixed so that we can use it for the change (running "esxcli system wbem set --rp-override="powerpath=240,vmware_base=150") and the change is persistent upon reboot; there is no need anymore for a change in /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh.
Thanks to this VMware fix, the workaround can be used with "secured boot".