Update ESXi 6.5 to U1 over SSH

Updating ESXi 6.5 to 6.5 U1, I encountered the following error:

[root@esx:~] esxcli software profile update -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml -p ESXi-6.5.0-20170702001-standard
 [InstallationError]
 [Errno 28] No space left on device
       vibs = VMware_locker_tools-light_6.5.0-0.23.5969300
 Please refer to the log file for more details.

The solution to this problem is to enable swap. I’m running this ESXi host on a single 32GB USB Thumb Drive, so I first had to create a VMFS5 datastore using the process at ESXi 6.5 Single USB Thumb Drive.

Once a datastore exists, enable Swap. Go to Host > System > Swap and activate swap on your datastore of choice. In my case there’s only one.

Once activated, this process to update ESXi over SSH worked flawlessly:

Enable outbound HTTP connections:

esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient

Perform the update:

esxcli software profile update -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml -p ESXi-6.5.0-20170702001-standard

Lock down HTTP connections after the update:

esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e false -r httpClient

Reboot the host:

reboot

For future reference, to see a list of available updates, use

esxcli software sources profile list -d \
  https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml \
  | awk '/6.5.0/ {print $1}'

[root@esx:~] esxcli software sources profile list -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml | awk '/6.5.0/ {print $1}'
ESXi-6.5.0-20170701001s-no-tools
ESXi-6.5.0-20170404001-standard
ESXi-6.5.0-4564106-standard
ESXi-6.5.0-20170104001-standard
ESXi-6.5.0-20171004001-no-tools
ESXi-6.5.0-20170702001-no-tools
ESXi-6.5.0-20170404001-no-tools
ESXi-6.5.0-20170304101-no-tools
ESXi-6.5.0-20171004001-standard
ESXi-6.5.0-20170104001-no-tools
ESXi-6.5.0-4564106-no-tools
ESXi-6.5.0-20170304101-standard
ESXi-6.5.0-20170301001s-standard
ESXi-6.5.0-20170701001s-standard
ESXi-6.5.0-20170304001-standard
ESXi-6.5.0-20170702001-standard
ESXi-6.5.0-20170304001-no-tools
ESXi-6.5.0-20170301001s-no-tools

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