Scripted Installations Thread

[Michelle_Laveri]

It's occoured to me that currently peoples "kickstart" questions & answers are dotted all over the place on various other threads/blogs. Beyond that there seems to be innumberable resources online especially on redhat.com.

Most of my work with kickstart has been with the UDA, although I have done some work building custom ESX CDs, and at some stage I must return to the topic of putting ESX on a memory stick - which has worked for others, but I've never made work personally.

I wondered if it would be useful to have like a "master" kickstart thread were people post their findings or questions in one place. Perhaps like a sticky FAQ?

Regards

Mike

[surfup]

Thanks Dinny.

Perhaps, I will re-created a new post and ask the same question so I can give you points. One problem I can think off is the new post might not "visible" to the experts people in this thread. I like Mike idea to ask the fVMTN orum to create a new "forum" for Kickstart so others can easy post/reply.

In short, thanks for your help and much appreciated.

Cheers,

[dinny]

Hiya,

I'm not bothered about the points retrospectively thanks - it was more the general concept ongoing..

A separate forum would be great - but I guess it is debatable whether the volume of posts would justify it?

I fully appreciate the "visibility" issue - if you re-read my suggestion - I had tried to cover that by suggesting a post on this thread with a link to the actual question?

Dinny

[surfup]

Thanks Dinny. I missed read your first post.

Cheers,

[kurtwest]

Sorry for such a newb question, but I am new to the CLI stuff. What is the difference in these two lines as far as what they do to the file in question:

cat > /tmp/esxcfg.sh <<EOF1

cat <<EOF > /etc/ntp.conf

[joeflint]

Hi,

I have an automated kickstart script for the network configuration. The script is generally working apart from the setting the rollingorder policy. I have tried several command variations as detailed below to configure at the switch or partgroup level, for example:

(1) /usr/bin/vmware-vim-cmd hostsvc/net/vswitch_setpolicy --nicteaming-rollingorder=false vSwitch0

(2) /usr/bin/vmware-vim-cmd hostsvc/net/portgroup_set --nicteaming-rollingorder=false vSwitch0 'Service Console'

(3) /usr/bin/vmware-vim-cmd hostsvc/net/portgroup_set --nicteaming-rollingorder=false vSwitch0 VMotion

All the above commands get executed without an error but the the command does not implement the change. I know the syntax is correct because if I execute the lines individually at the service console they work. Likewise, if I run the networking portion of the script after the ESX Server is built there is successful execution.

The main issue is why there is no update to the rolloingorder via the kickstart script. I have implemented plenty of sleep and network_refresh commands in between the syntax in case this was an issue.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

[joeflint]

Hello,

I have a question with regards to scripting an ESX Server build. We already have a standard ISO image including customisation of various settings within the kickstart script and the ESX Server builds okay.

What I'd like to undertstand is whether it is is feasible to pass parameters to the kickstart script, which in turn can used by the script to build the ESX configuration? or whether the parameters can be read from a file and then used by the script. For example, a possible parameter could be the ESX server hostname or IP address.

If this is feasible then any examples on how to implement are appreciated.

Thanks

[henketh]

Hi joeflint!

Have you got it to work?

I have a similar issue trying to get vmware-vim-cmd commands to work in my kickstart script %post-section.

This are the commands I can't get to work in the script:

#Rename local storage

/usr/bin/vmware-vim-cmd hostsvc/datastore/rename uxa10:storage1 local-uxa10

#Set failover detection to Beacon Probing for vSwitch0

/usr/bin/vmware-vim-cmd /hostsvc/net/vswitch_setpolicy --failurecriteria-check-beacon 1 vSwitch0

#Set failover order for vSwitch0 pg VMotion

/usr/bin/vmware-vim-cmd /hostsvc/net/portgroup_set --nicorderpolicy-active=vmnic12 --nicorderpolicy-standby=vmnic0 vSwitch0 VMotion

#Set failover order for vSwitch0 pg Service Console

/usr/bin/vmware-vim-cmd /hostsvc/net/portgroup_set --nicorderpolicy-active=vmnic0 --nicorderpolicy-standby=vmnic12 vSwitch0 "Service Console"

If i run the commands manually afterwards they work fine

Any help appreciated!