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Jae_Ellers
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esx kickstart config generator?

Some download/blog site I visited in the last couple weeks had an ESX 3 kickstart creator/editor. Now I can't get the right keywords into google to locate it again.

Anybody seen this thing and remembers where it is?

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MR-T
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This is what you're looking for:

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/?p=379

It's not the exact link, but close enough. You'll find Mikes got plenty to say on this.

Michelle_Laveri
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Yeah, I never know when to shut-up Smiley Wink

VMware have their own kickstart creator - it can be enabled from the Service Console, and once enabled - it has web-based front end.

The enablement of it is a bit "obscure". But if you just want a quick n dirty KS file - it might be less hassle than downloading & configuring the whole UDA...

ESX has its own wizard for creating the kickstart.cfg file. It is a web-based tool, but it is not enabled by default on the ESX host. You must first edit a configuration file (struts-config.xml) on the ESX server to enable it. If you don’t make this change, when you try to access the web-page the message appears

“Scripted Install is disabled

Message: Your ESX Server is not configured to support scripted installations. To support scripted installations, please refer to the VMware Web Access Administrators Guide.”

1. Open a command-line view on an ESX 3.x host and change into the directory where the struts-config.xml is location at

cd /usr/lib/vmware/webAccess/tomcat/apache-tomcat-5.5.17/webapps/ui/WEB-INF/

2. Make a backup of the configuration file with

cp struts-config.xml struts-config.xml-backup

3. Edit the configuration file with

nano –w struts-config.xml

4. Comment out the line that begins

<action path=“/scripted install …. Disabled.jsp

Note:[/b]

You comment things out by beginning the comment . If you read the line just above it will tell you why we are doing this. Basically this stops the warning message outlined above



5. Next remove the comments to enable the line that begins just below with

6. Save the file and exit nano

7. Restart the webAccess service with

service vmware-webAccess restart

Regards

Mike

Regards
Michelle Laverick
@m_laverick
http://www.michellelaverick.com
MR-T
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Excellent, I'm glad you're online.

It's much easier for you to explain this.

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Michelle_Laveri
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Yeah, why on earth they made it so obscure to enable is beyond me... plus unlike the ESX 2.5.4 you can't handle virtual switch configuration with this version. 3 steps forward 2 steps back...

Incidentally, on the UDA. I found another "feature". That selective way of loading drivers to stop an scripted install touching the SAN... er, doesn't work...

Workaround - using ignoredisk in the KS file instead like so:

\# Ignore these SAN LUNs

ignoredisk –drives=sda,sdb,sdc,sdd,sde,sdf,sdg,sdh,sdi,sdj,sdk

\# Bootloader options

bootloader –location=mbr –driveorder=cciss/c0d0

Working on getting the drive thang working or a script that will work out which LUNs to put into the ignoredisk entry...

Regards

Mike

ps roll-on ESX embbed... Smiley Wink

Regards
Michelle Laverick
@m_laverick
http://www.michellelaverick.com
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Jae_Ellers
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Hi guys,

Nope, I've kept up with the UDA. We already have a RIS solution, and while I bet I can use bits of Mike's work I saw a stand-alone kickstart solution from someone with a slick windows interface.

It was basically an ESX ks.cfg editor that you can use to customize your ks.cfg. Understands pre/post installs, etc. Just saw it laying around on some web site. Forgot to put it in the ol' favorites/bookmarks. Forgot the web site. Looked kinda like a veeam type tool, but it's not them.

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Jae_Ellers
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ding ding ding. Points all around. That's the one.

Thanks for the tip about the built-in. I haven't fired up the ks.cfg generator on ESX 3.0.1. It was pretty crusty on 2.x and I'd filed that away under bad memories. I'll give this, the xtravirt, and uda tools a once-over as I need to get my configs automated (how many times have I said this).

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