Hello,
Unfortunately it looks like you have got binded in a 'chicken-before-egg' situation there:
"Cause:
This issue occurs when you boot the ESXi host from a USB device or a SD card and the image is loaded to the memory which includes the esx.conf file. When you enable the USB controller for passthrough, all USB devices are invisible to the kernel. When you deselect the USB controllers from the passthrough list, the change saves to the esx.conf file. The esx.conf file is in the memory during ESXi uptime and when you issue the reboot command, the esx.conf is saved back to the USB device. In this case, the kernel cannot see any USB devices, so the configuration change does not get saved."
Workaround is to re-image the install or use a different USB port (and not set DirectPath I/O on this):
https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2068645
You may be able to edit the esxi.conf on perform a few other steps as per this thread:
https://communities.vmware.com/thread/395625?start=0&tstart=0
(Though I am unaware if /sbin/autobackup.sh still exists as per this fix)
Bob
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