is there a quick startup guide to unattended 3i installations? i'd like to even skip the 5 step manual installation and do it all automagically
If you haven't found them already, you might want to look at some of the documents posted by lberc.
I did see one in these posts but it was a long time ago, try searching for it here maybe.
i did but didnt find anything..
http://communities.vmware.com/click.jspa?searchID=3484572&objectType=2&objectID=293227
Look here maybe this will assist
that's not exactly what i'm looking for. i know how to do unattended installations. i built the EDA for that purpose (). i was looking for a way to do that with ESXi too though. but one of the links you posted pointed me in the right direction. i'll write a few tests soon to see if it works. thanks.
If you haven't found them already, you might want to look at some of the documents posted by lberc.
those help thanks!
Glad to hear that at least one person read them B-). Start with this doc . -l
they're a great help in understanding how the esxi installation process works
i got a setup where it boots through PXE, installs (manually) and after a reboot i have a bare esxi server. so far so good, but i'm still missing something in the process as to where to exactly start customizing. i pass my custom.tgz and see it unpacked correctly in the busybox environment. but i'm unsure how to procede:
when the host boots, i press alt-f1 and login. i see the e1000 module loaded (have 2 nics in the host) but i dont seem to have network connectivity. is it supposed to? how do i configure it?
i guess i could rewrite the /usr/lib/vmware/somethingWelcome.py to unload the lpf and qla drivers, then find a harddisk and dump the visor image on it. seems a bit eerie though. are there hooks or other scripting parts that allow for a supported way to pass (unattended) configuration parameters to the installer?
i added some parameter settings after vmkernel.gz on the append line. but i'm not sure how to use those in the script i put in /etc/rc.local.d. what's the secret here?
customization of the host can't start until the dd image is put on the harddisk. again this would require a rewrite of the installer .py scripts which i would rather not do (mainly for compatibility reasons). is there a supported way to write to the newly written esxi host disk?
i see you use a midwive to automatically configure a new esxi server. but as far as i can see, it starts configuring the busybox environment. this would not change the esxi host. but i'm sure it changes the host, not the installer. but what am i missing here? this would probably be a clue to how my setup would have to work also.
any help would be greatly appreciated!