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analyst7
Contributor
Contributor

Ignore VMFS partition on Scripted Installations

I want my script to ignore a VMFS3 partition on Scripted Installations in the event the SAN cables are accidently left connected. Does anyone know the command for this within the kix script? Also...I am taking for granted that it would be placed before the Partitioning portion of the script. Is that correct? If not where would it be located? Any help would be much appreciated.

Thx

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3 Replies
Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership

Hello

There are other instructions in the forums on how to do this, but here goes.

in the %pre part of the kickstart you need to remove the emulex or qlogic drivers loaded when the system boots of media. You can use 'rmmod drivername' to do this.


Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
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Schorschi
Expert
Expert

Ed, Although we have strict policy telling the field guys to remove shared storage connectivity, we have written procedures and I am using the --ignoredisk parameter in the kickstart config for disks, we had someone the other day forget to remove shared storage connectivity, and of course wipe out LUNs. I have been tempted to tweak the stage 2 setup, and remove the drivers completely, but I really hate to get that fare into the weeds.

Your solution using the pre% script to remove drivers from memory makes the most since to me, the question is, how do you determine which drivers to unload? You just shot-gun it, and unload all the applicable drivers? or is their a rmmod ql* trick possible? will remove module take a directed wildcard? Guess I could make a smaill script to parse the result of lsmod?

The only problem I see, is that if boot-from-SAN is being used? You never can avoid the potential problem.

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Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership

Hello,

Your %pre script would need to for do 'lsmod' to list the modules, then look for the module names for each device. THey all start the same for each vendor so that could be the trigger.

You are also correct about Boot From SAN. There is no way to do this when you boot from SAN.


Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
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