Hi Guys!
Definitely you are my last hope!
I've the following MOBO: ASUS M2N68 NVIDIA nForce630a LAN NVIDIA nForce built-in Gigabit MAC with external Realtek 8211CL PHY
I tried to install the ESXi 3.5.0 Update 4 build 153875, but unfortunately, it don't recognize my SATA controler and NIC. After much research I finaly found the way (in your vm-help site) to rewrite the oem.tgz, adding SATA and NIC controllers in simple.map and pci.ids, install it in one usbdisk... and so my SATA controler was recognized.
Now my problem is that my NIC controller won't load. (ID 10de:054c), but, according to the output of lspci the network card seems to be loaded but I cant edit my network config in ESXi Customize System screen.
output lspci -n:
00:10:00 Class 0200: 10de:054c
Searching in the config.log and var/log/messages I found the following messages:
config.log
Failed to load module 'forcedeth': Invalid argument
Check system logs for more information.
Using /mod/forcedeth.o
Loading module forcedeth failed. Exec of command '/sbin/vmkload_mod /mod/forcedeth.o ' suceeded, but returned with non-zero status: 1
Loading module forcedeth fauled. Exec of command /sbin/vmkload_mod /mod/forcedeth.o succeeded, but returned with non-zero status: 1
/var/log/messages
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.754 cpu1:1226)Mod: 1445: modLoaderHeap avail after: 7795376
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.754 cpu1:1226)Mod: 1473: no private ID set
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.829 cpu1:1229)Loading module forcedeth ...
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.829 cpu1:1229)Mod: 936: Starting load for module: forcedeth R/O length: 0xc000 R/W length: 0x2000 Md5sum: c0ce7cb652040d735f720727b518b290
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)Mod: 1373: Module forcedeth: initFunc: 0x9977d8 text: 0x98f000 data: 0x2946740 bss: 0x2946b40 (writeable align 32)
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)Mod: 1389: modLoaderHeap avail before: 7795360
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)Initial heap size : 102400, max heap size: 4194304
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)<6>forcedeth.c: Reverse Engineered nForce ethernet driver. Version 0.60-Driver Package V1.25.
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)PCI: driver forcedeth is looking for devices
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)PCI: Trying 00:01.1
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)PCI: Announcing 00:01.1
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)PCI: Trying 00:02.0
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)PCI: Trying 00:02.1
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)PCI: Trying 00:04.0
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)PCI: Trying 00:04.1
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)PCI: Trying 00:06.0
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)PCI: Announcing 00:06.0
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)PCI: Trying 00:09.0
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)PCI: Trying 00:0a.0
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)PCI: Announcing 00:0a.0
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)PCI: Trying 01:06.0
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)PCI: Announcing 01:06.0
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)PCI: driver forcedeth claimed 0 device
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)ALERT: Mod: 1413: Initialization for forcedeth failed with -19.
May 4 14:20:32 vmkernel: 0:00:00:22.989 cpu2:1229)forcedeth failed to load with status 0, -19, 0xbad0001.
I think that the problem is that ESXi forcedeth module isn't able to recognize my NIC PCI ID so to confirm this, I dowloaded the ESXi source (VMware-eesx-public-source-3.5.0-153875.tar.gz) and the latest version of NVIDIA nforce source drivers (NFORCE-Linux-x86-1.23.zip) and thus I compare the two forcedeth.c files.
The lines below exist in nvidia forcedeth.c but don't exist in esxi forcedeth.c:
#ifndef PCI_DEVICE_ID_NVIDIA_NVENET_24
#define PCI_DEVICE_ID_NVIDIA_NVENET_24 0x054c
#endif
#ifndef PCI_DEVICE_ID_NVIDIA_NVENET_25
#define PCI_DEVICE_ID_NVIDIA_NVENET_25 0x054d
#endif
#ifndef PCI_DEVICE_ID_NVIDIA_NVENET_26
#define PCI_DEVICE_ID_NVIDIA_NVENET_26 0x054e
#endif
#ifndef PCI_DEVICE_ID_NVIDIA_NVENET_27
#define PCI_DEVICE_ID_NVIDIA_NVENET_27 0x054f
#endif
This refers to new devices. Of course that there is other places in both files that have diferences.
So the challenge is: Compile one new forcedeth module to make it able to recognize this new devices.
I hope you guys can help me.
Best Regards
Pierre
