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Immortal
Immortal

How do I setup ESXi in a dualboot with Linux ?

How do I setup ESXi in a dualboot with Linux ?

yes I know - this doesn't make a lot of sense - anyway I was asked to setup an ESXi on one local disk and a regular Linux on another local disk.

Looks like ESXi doesn't like to be chainloaded via Grub or Grub4dos ....

Any suggestions are welcome

thanks Ulli

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Gerrit_Lehr
Commander
Commander

Hm, interesting topic! If you install ESXi first and Linux afterwards, doesn't grub recognize the ESX installation and include it in Grub?

Kind Regards,

Gerrit Lehr

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

Yes - thats what I need to try next - so far I tested in VMs with a ESXi disk and a Linux disk and tried to use standalone bootmanagers. I'll keep you updated - since we can access VMFS via a JAVA-tool from Linux-hosts this may make more sense now ...

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VMware-liveCD:


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Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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christianZ
Champion
Champion

Just a simle thought - maybe boot order in the scsi controller could do the job - for booting of esxi choose the first disk; for booting of Linux choose the 2.

Both should be installed separately of course.

Simple and effective.

By the way congrats to your Guru status.

Reg

Christian

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

or.... you just use a completely different approach:

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/07/29/esxi-35-update-2-on-a-usb-memory-key/



--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

thanks for your suggestions - but the guy who actualy wants this says : no ESXi booting from stick and he also doesn't want to switch boot-order in BIOS.

So I am looking for the hard way Smiley Wink

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description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:


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Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

In that case, do as suggested first install ESXi -if possible on its own disk- and then linux afterwards. As mentioned before, most linux distributions will see your existing grub install and add to it.

If you can't do that, then temporarily disable the disk with linux and adjust the grub loader on ESXi by hand to include the linux part.

This shouldn't be too hard, but i personally think the USB stick is the easiest, cleanest, least obtrusive way to get this working (and have it stay working over kernel updates and all that type of fun)



--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

Visit the VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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Jackobli
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hello, I am interested in the solution too, my test machine should perhaps do the same.

If you are not able to adjust grub, you don't need to set the boot order in BIOS permanently, some boards allow to choose the disk to boot by pressing F8 or another function key.

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Gerrit_Lehr
Commander
Commander

Yeah some BIOS allow to automaticly open the boot menu, too. Configured right, this will have the same effect as a bootloader. But I dont see y grub wont do the job.

Kind Regards,

Gerrit Lehr

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Kind regards, Gerrit Lehr If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".
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RParker
Immortal
Immortal

but the guy who actualy wants this says : no ESXi booting from stick and he also doesn't want to switch boot-order in BIOS

Who is this guy, bill gates? Sounds like he has a problem.

Make him figure it out, if he gives you all the barriers, then make him see the futility in completing his request Smiley Happy I am a firm believer in people that want to make it as difficult as possible should be the ones to figure out the solution.

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

Who is this guy, bill gates? Sounds like he has a problem.

No - he has no problems - at least none that I am aware of Smiley Wink

he just believes that the most beautiful solution should be tried first - by the way - that is also my believe Smiley Wink

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description of vmx-parameters:

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Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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RParker
Immortal
Immortal

he just believes that the most beautiful solution should be tried first

So dual booting a proprietary product with another open source solution is beautiful? That seems like a lot of extra work to me.

The most 'beautiful' solution is to leave ESX as it is, since that's what it's there for, VM hosting. It's pretty much a single function machine. What's wrong with using Linux as a VM? Why does it have to be dual boot?

Now before you criticize me and think I am just here to play devil's advocate, I have seen your posts, I know you are a genius at work, and you obviously know a lot about a lot, especially these things and I am surprised to see you posted something like this, because surely if YOU can't figure it out, there are probably only a scant few that can.

So I am really trying to understand what the purpose behind dual booting can do. This could be a good learning tool..

Help me Obi Wan!

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

>So dual booting a proprietary product with another open source solution is beautiful?

Well if the task is to dualboot ESXi and a Linux with a single button at boot-time - then yes.

Personally i would probably simply install ESXi as usual and in case you need a Linux on the same host simply boot a Linux LiveCD.

Why i post this ? - simply because I am lazy Smiley Wink I was asked to try this two days ago and so far only spend maybe two hours with experiments.

... because surely if YOU can't figure it out, there are probably only a scant few that can.

Oh dear - I am flattered - but really - I may know a lot about hosted Windows based VMware but I am sure no expert on ESX and related stuff

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description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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cmacmillan
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

This has been asked:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/161775

The BIOS boot menu seems to be the most effective way. If it reorders the drives, that might keep ESXi from "using" your Linux disk. But then again, why not just PXE_boot the ESXi???

http://www.chriswolf.com/?p=182

Or, add your disk, dd the "big" image from the ESXi ISO to the new drive and modify grub accordingly. The boot partition on ESXi appears to be hd(x,3), so you'll need to chainload syslinux from the grub loader:

map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
root (hd1,3)
chainloader +1

Make that a menu option in grub and enjoy... (by the way, tested this from an ESXi VM running openSuse/grub - yes, booting ESXi from syslinux, chained through grub on ESXi - good stuff...).

--Collin C. MacMillan

SOLORI - Solution Oriented, LLC

Collin C. MacMillan, VCP4/VCP5 VCAP-DCD4 Cisco CCNA/CCNP, Nexenta CNE VMware vExpert 2010-2012 SOLORI - Solution Oriented, LLC http://blog.solori.net If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".
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SchwarzerA
Contributor
Contributor

On a EFI/UEFI machine the task is rather simple. You can add an entry like this:

submenu 'GRUB :: alternative OSs' {
   menuentry "VMware ESXi" {
   insmod part_gpt
   insmod fat
   insmod chain
   echo "Set root to first partition on first disk /dev/sda1 or (hd0,gpt1)"
   set root=(hd0,gpt1)
   echo "Chainloading from sda1 now..."
   chainloader /EFI/VMware/safeboot64.efi
}

(preferably in /etc/grub.d/40_custom).

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