VCSA showing unknown command (VCSA file system full)

In this post we are going to see, how to fix unknown command error in VCSA appliance. When you access vcsa through ssh, after enabling shell you are not able to run any command. It is throwing unknown command. This happened with me twice and here is a fix.



This normally happens when VCSA file system is full. As you are not able to run any command in SSH you will not be clear space from putty session. Below is the step by step procedure to clear space on VCSA.

1. Mount RHEL ISO to your Vcenter appliance.
2. Boot into Rescue (Rescue installed system) mode.
3. It will prompt that linux installation will be mounted under /mnt/sysimage. Say continue, do not click read only option.
4. run df -h command to see if /mnt/systimage is full.
5. Again run du -h to see which directory is full.
6. In my case it was audit logs occupying more space.
7. run the command rm -r /mnt/sysimage/var/log/audit/audit.log to clear audit.log files.
8. Again run df -h and make sure /mnt/systimage is having free space.
9. Disconnect RHEL ISO from appliance and reboot it.
10. Now it should come online without any issues.