Now that ESXi 4.1 is supporting things like USB passthrough, one would expect there would be a (undocumented) way to attach a CDrom or USB key.
I have a situation where I want to install ESXi as per best practice, but the Blade that i'm trying to install on has only ServerEngine 10GbE NICs connected. From ESX/ESXi 4.0 there has been a driver CD with the required drives, but ESXi 4.0 had no way to install these at installation. I was hoping that the drivers would have been incorporated into 4.1 but they don't appear to have been.
As these drivers are the only way to get networking operational on the device, I am needing to find a way to install these drivers post install or to create a custom install with the drivers copied to the host at the time of installation for either automatic or manual enablement.
Has anyone come across a workaround for this?
If VMware expect to drop ESX in favour for ESXi, there really needs to be a way to add drivers in the same manner as the current full ESX installation process. If only one could press a function key to allows this ingest...
Couldn't you use the VI client and mount your local cd-rom to install the drivers into the guest?
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Nice try, but definately no cigar...
1) VI Client requires the networking drivers to be operational to be able to work - The whole issue here is to access the driver CD from the HOST
2) The issue is with the HOST and not the guest
the question here is how can we access USB CDROM in host in 4.1? i guess we need to disable some services in COS.
referenced from
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/167097
related to esxi3.5
To find the device reference of your CDROM:
esxcfg-mpath -l
Example output:
ide.vmhba32-ide.0:0-mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0
Runtime Name: vmhba32:C0:T0:L0
Device: mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0
Device Display Name: Local TEAC CD-ROM (mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0)
State: active
Transport: ide
Load the iso9660 module with this command:
vmkload_mod iso9660
Mount the CDROM using the device determined earlier with esxcfg-mpath -l:
/sbin/vsish -e set /vmkModules/iso9660/mount mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0
The CDROM will be mounted under /vmfs/volumes/ [CDROM Label] /
********
Proof in the pudding
Am new to this but was attempting to update oem.tgz as per "vm-help.com" to update or add realtek 8168 drivers
bootbank info
~ # ls
altbootbank dev lib64 opt sbin tmp vmfs
bin etc local.tgz proc scratch usr vmimages
bootbank lib locker productLocker store var vmupgrade
~ #
~ # cd bootbank
/vmfs/volumes/df78d378-153310d7-298d-535268d8ee4f #
notes....
TO COPY OEM.TGZ FROM CDROM TO BOOTBANK (FOUND BIG SIZE DIFFERENCE) SO SAVED FROM CDROM TO OEM.BAK, am thinking I need to append the 2 oem.tgz files but can't from console.
/vmfs/volumes/df78d378-153310d7-298d-535268d8ee4f # cp /vmfs/volumes/mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0/OEM.TGZ /vmfs/volumes/df78d378-153310d7-298d-535268d8ee4f/oem.tgz
/vmfs/volumes/df78d378-153310d7-298d-535268d8ee4f #