Ultimate Deployment Appliance

[VMTN_Admin]

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/232

Deploy your favorite OS by pressing F12, bring your own ISO's, we'll do the rest

[chrisnasah]

Hi Guys,

Please be patiennt with me as am a newbie to this. We have just managed to install 3 host via the CD install however am very interested on the script installs. I have managed to create a script using the webpage for the host as a starter to get me going.

Now am confused about how to get my KS file working. We have got any RIS server, PXE server and didnt know something like this existed before looking into this i.e very new to this.

Could someone please tell me the best and easiest way for me to setup the environment for scrip installs and the what i need to do for that. For example... to use UDA do i need to Linux OS or windows too??? Has anyone got any documents on how i could install this or how do i create a PXE server if thats what i need.

Any help to a newbie will be well appreciated.

Thanks

[Michelle_Laveri]

UDA Download Problems from RTFM.

I've been investigating this issue today. Sorry it's taken so long. I just that the SRM book is taking all my focus.

We do have problems with the download. Mainly that first download links are dead. People do offer to host the UDA, and then fold up and then don't bother to notify. That's what's looks like the case here.

I've download the UDA tar file and the MD5SUM do match the one's on the RTFM website. However, when I try to open the tar file in windows - it fails. I'm running ESX3i - so I don't have the option to attempt an extract at the service console.

Can someone download the UDA from this location

http://www.rtfm-ed.eu/downloads/uda14-esx.tar

confirm the MD5SUM is 4ec323889eb2b6da07c9ef7c775667de

and that it does successful extract at the COS with tar -xzvf....?

Thanks

Regards

Mike

ps. Moral of the story? We need UDA 1.4 on something like sourceforge.net - ideally in a OVF format or zipped up... OR we need the 1.4 version submitted to the Vmware Virtual Appliance Market place...

[chrisnasah]

Hi Guys,

Just managed to install the UDA in a vm and able to log into it. However i need to change the IP addressing as our network is not on 10 subnet. After i change the ip address of the eth0 to say 192.168.3.50 and can ping it across network, should i be able to then access the web browser on 192.168.3.50 because i am not able to do it?? Do i need to edit the 10.0.0.104 web browser address somewhere else??

Thanks

[tjhorne]

Our network doesn't fit the 10.x.x.x model either and I'm a bit stumped on getting this configured to fit our 172.30.x.x network. Any clarification or instruction on this topic would be helpful, thanks!

[Michelle_Laveri]

Have you read my little guide to the UDA on www.rtfm-ed.co.uk

Basically, the UDA is set for 10.x.x.x but can be reconfigured to respond to any IP range - and has a built in DHCP scope to allow for PXE booting...

You give your workstation a temporary 10 address and then use the web-admin page to reconfigure for your iP ranges

Regards

Mike

[Michelle_Laveri]

HELP!

My UDA has died... I umounted an iso.... and then the list of OS just disappeared....

Rebooting didn't fix the problem its lost DISK2....

Anyway, following the boot process - there is obiviously some disk mount problem.

When I was able to login, /etc/fstab didn't exist....

and the file-system appears be mounted as read-only...

Login to the Remote Console, and watching the boot process this is what it says....

[dconvery]

Now THATS encouraging...even the master can royally screw things up 🐵

[brugh]

yeah he should've used eda instead :smileylaugh:

[brugh]

i hope for your sake that it's only the fstab file and nothing else. that's pretty easy to recreate!

[tjhorne]

Another quick question, I got the deployment and script to work but I'm getting some strange characters in my host and NTP files once the install is done. Any ideas? Is there something in this file that I don't need that could be causing the issue?

echo “# Do not remove the following line, or various programs” >> /etc/hosts

echo “# that require network functionality will fail.” >> /etc/hosts

echo “127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost” >> /etc/hosts

echo “xxx.xx.xxx.x vitest4.xxx.com vi3test4” >> /etc/hosts

echo “xxx.xx.xx.x vitest2.xxx.com vi3test2” >> /etc/hosts

echo “xxx.xx.xx.x vitest3.xxx.com vi3test3” >> /etc/hosts

[Michelle_Laveri]

i hope for your sake that it's only the fstab file and nothing else. that's pretty easy to recreate!

Well, not really sure what happened. My fstab has been giving me some grief for sometime, but it wasn't a priority to fix it...

What happened was I upload a new version of ESX to the UDA, umounted an old ISO, and then went to mount the new ISO - and then I found that my OS html page was blank...

Now the file system is being mounted read-only - that makes recreating the fstab a little bit tricky. In old LILO linux you would pass a boot parameter (1) to boot in single user mode - but I don't how that's achieved in grub... I guess I could edit the inittab file and change the run level there...

Anyone got a standard fstab file from a UDA which they could cut & paste here...

I do have a backup of the UDA, but that's pretty old, and would rather get the original back...

Regards

Mike (AKA "The Master".... any Dr Who fans here )

[Michelle_Laveri]

Well, I managed to boot my UDA to a knoppix live CD, and get my fstab back...

It boots with out horrible errors...

BUT. My OS list is still not there. I think it clobbered when I tried umount and unconfigure.

Carl. How do get my OS list back. I think it might be the UDA.pl file that's gone wrong?

Regards

MIke

[_the_dude_]

Sounds like something went wrong with the creation of a temporary file to replace the /etc/fstab (I'm thinking maybe your filesystem is full, try df -k)

this would also explain wy the os-list isn't there anymore. The list is also edited/replaced by a new copy when you unmount/remove an OS.

You may be able to find an old copy of it in the /var/public/tmp directory or try

cp -p /var/public/conf/os.new /va/public/conf/os.conf

you'll have a fresh list then...

let me know if it worked!

[Michelle_Laveri]

Well, the .new file was there - and I was able to get it back copying over conf....

You right my / is full with 0% space left. Don't know how that happened. I copy all my isos and other files to second DISK2.

I've done a find for anything over 10MB with find / -mount -size +10240k but nothing suspicious comes up like an ISO in the wrong location.

I've couple of files coming off www/ but nothing enormous... and nothing new has been added.

I wondered what caused this...?

It feels like logging has filled / perhaps...

What's the best way to proceed. I don't want to go about deleting stuff from / in case I make problems worse...

Regards

Mike

(Carl: Care to have a look at my UDA to see what the problem is? I can give you remote access via my Citrix Box....)

[Michelle_Laveri]

Uggggh, like a total ****ing idiot I decide to edit one of my entries in the templates list - and now that's blank...

I think I am going to be reaching for my backup pretty soon - this is getting ugly.

No idea why my / filled up so unexpectedly. Not getting rid of my broken UDA just yet. Worried it might be an issue with the UDA, and I don't want this happening to other people here...

Carl. Unless I've been idiot and filled my / by copying large file (which I cannot see I have done) we might have problem. My UDA has been running since we first started...

Regards

Mike

[_the_dude_]

Mike,

Can you go to the prompt and do

cd /

du -k | sort -n

At the bottom of the output you will see the directory that holds the most data.

Most of the logging is in the /var/log directory. If you're right about the logging then that will appear at the bottom...

If you're still lost I'll go take a look..

Carl

[chrisnasah]

resolved issue.

[ssahadev2]

While Installing ESX 3.x server using UDA, installer might stop prompting to enter IP address. Press Alt + F3 and if you see the below message

"pump told us: no dhcp reply received"

then its probably a Physical Switch Issue, this is seen only with Gigabit switch.

[Treborius]

Hello

Hoping some can help me out here, I have installed the free version of ESXI 3.5 and I am having a hard time importing UDA into that enviroment. Converter fails, I have installed the remote console and the command I am using generates an error. VMKFSTOOLS --server XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX /VMFS/VOLUMES/PATH/FIle /VMFS/VOLUMES/PATH/File -- I have a 8 gig box, dual core -- but I have two seperate datastores -- datastore1 and datastore2.

Anyone can help me out.

Treborius

[vmkillies]

Hoping to get help from some one over here

I have installed UDA on vmwaokstation 3.5 and trying to built a ESX Server VM using the PXE option of UDA.

The problem i am facing is following . The vm gets booted using the ISO kept on the base 2k3 machine but stops before actual installation starts with the folloing messages on the screen.

Any help is highly appreciated !