No windows.iso etc. on ESXi 4 server started from PXE

[Andreas_Maurer]

Hello,

did anybody managed to include the windows.iso, vSphere Client etc. on an ESXi 4 sever whitch is booted from a PXE source. Any Idee welcome!

Andreas

[DSTAVERT]

Use the unsupported console and do a find / -name *.iso

It is possible that the the iso's do exist but a link was not created.

Do an fdisk -l from the console as well. See if you actually have that partition.

[Andreas_Maurer]

Thanks for your reply. The symlinks are created fine but the complete target partition is missing. I only extracted the gz/tgz/vgz files from the first (in real the fith) partionen.

I have no idee to include files from the third (eight) partition using syslinux.

Andreas

[DSTAVERT]

The vsphere client can be downloaded from the VMware website. You can open the install image (the DD file) with winimage or mount in linux and pull out the various ISO files. Put the ISO images in a directory on your datastore.

[Andreas_Maurer]

Its not a problem to extract the ISO etc. Just like extracting the boot files

I want to provide the images and the client just the same way a full ESXi install do.

I hope that some other had a better idee to integrate the files into the TFTP server.

[DSTAVERT]

You must remember that PXE boot is not an install. You could perhaps have the files in a folder on your datastore and add some scripting to /etc/rc.local that updates / creates the links to the files. Otherwise you may need some digging

[Andreas_Maurer]

Thank you for spamming this thread. Has anybody usefull informations concerning my issue?

Frei nach Dieter Nuhr: wenn du keine Ahnung hast einfach Fresse halten ...

[DSTAVERT]

I was just about finished setting up a TFTP server to see if I could figure something out for you. Your response deserves nothing.

[Rumple]

Here is your useful information

Putting ISO files into the vmimages location is no longer a supported location for storing vmimages.

The correct process is to provide the ISO files to the users using a client side accessible mount point or put the ISO's on a datastore (be it vmfs volume or nfs mounted datastore).

[Andreas_Maurer]

Thanks for helping.

My preferred method of deploying the Client tools to a fresh installed VM is including them into the setup process. They are installed unattended directly from our deployment server.

I only want to provide the tools in the "original" location to get the "Install/Update Client tools" menu entry working. Without the ISOs in the right location you get an error message that "/usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/windows.iso" is missing.

It´s just to get the PXE boot method to perfection. It was never easier to install or upgrade a new/existing server.

[Andreas_Maurer]

To answer my own question:

I fix this issue with a custom oem.tgz which contains all needed files AND a litte shell script which (re)links the /locker folder to my folder structure.

Anybody who wants to have more information can contact me

PXE booting ESXi 4 server is a brilliant feature. I really like it.