ESXi 4.0 USB Installation Doesn't Work.

[BDMcGrewVM]

So I've got both the stock ESXi 4.0 installation ISO as well as the ISO with the IBM customizations, which is what I need.

I've tried with three different flash drives. Using the CD's installation on to a flash drive, as well as the Winimage method and DD (under Windows, Linux and MacOS) and to no avail.

When I try and boot the from the flash drive I get "boot error" and if I hit enter it changes to "root error". I've tried this on the IBM 3400 servers that will be running the ESXi 4, as well a two Dell 2590's, a Dell i530 and a MacPro. All yield the same results.

I've also tried on several different flash drives. First an old school 2GB Sony with no pre-isntalled viruses as well as a brand new SanDisk Cruiser 2GB and a Best Buy Geek Squad (San Disk Cruiser) 2GB, both of which has the U3 virus I mean application pre-installed but removed by me.

What am I missing???

[jarbro]

Mine is just in my test lab. It's on a Dell Inspiron 545s. Installs perfect to internal HDD and install to USB via ISO installer completes successfully, but refuses to boot. I have seen other places where if you go into your BIOS and change your USB emulation it will work, but I do not have that feature in my bios.

[BDMcGrewVM]

Ah! there is your problem!

Dell has disabled USB boot in the Inspiron BIOS. I know this becuase I have an i530 on my desk and fought with USB boot all day long before I decided to try the boot on a notebook, which worked perfectly.

-b

[jarbro]

I wish this was the case. However I just successfully booted to USB from a Ubuntu Live Image I created on the 545. The interesting thing is my BIOS detected the Ubuntu USB disk as DISK0-HDD where as the VMWare USB is detected as DISK0-ZIP.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

You might try to manually extract the DD image to the USB flash drive instead of running the install.




Dave

VMware Communities User Moderator

New book in town - vSphere Quick Start Guide -http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/08/12/new-book-in-town-vsphere-quick-start-guide/.

Do you have a system or PCI card working with VMDirectPath? Submit your specs to the Unofficial VMDirectPath HCL - http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=21.

[krowczynski]

Maybe this instruction can help you.

[JensJacobsen]

>>However I just successfully booted to USB from a Ubuntu Live Image

Hi jarbro.

I think it is a bios configuration issue you have.

I suggest you do the following, to resolve it:

1. Completely clean the target USB stick (remove all partitions, boot sectors, U3 stuff and anything else that you can think of).

2. Make the stick bootable in a standard way (ubuntu usb boot, FreeDOS, HP boot or whatever you like).

3. Test that your system will boot from the new boot USB stick.

4. Configure bios.

- Most bios'es has two usb boot modes:

-- USB boot (the stick is recognized or flagged as a USB disk by bios, or you set it to boot from a USB-HDD manually)

-- HDD boot (the stick appears in the list of harddisks).

ONLY!!!! HDD boot wil work for vmware.

Set your bios to boot from HDD and change the HDD boot order so that the USB stick is first in the list.

5. Test that you are (still) booting from the USB stick.

6. If you cannot make the system boot from the USB stick then change the USB stick (some sticks just wont work, some sticks wont work with your bios) and start over.

- After this point you need to make sure that your system recognises your USB stick as a HDD and that you actually can boot from it.

7. Change boot order to 1. CDROM then 2. HDD (USB stick listed first in the order).

8. Boot the vmware installer disk and choose the USB stick as install target.

9. Finish installation, remove CDROM then reboot into the USB stick.

Things to watch out for:

- Removing the USB stick from the system may make the bios change the boot order so treat your USB as a fixed HDD.

- Some bios'es has a special setting to allow for detection and booting from USB sticks as HDD devices (like "Detect USB legacy devices" or similar).

I hope it works.

Regards

Jens

[Chaskel]

This past weekend I attempted to install ESXi 4u1 (fresh install) to an SD card and USB thumb drive on a lab DELL Inspiron 530 and also ran into the same issue (Note that I have no problems booting a recovery Windows disk via USB thumd drive on this same system). I spent pretty much the entire day trying to determine what may be going on and coming up with a workaround but unfortunately was unsuccessful in getting it to work. I do however believe I know what is going on and how someone can reproduce this issue. I am also writing this to save others time :):

1. Take a brand new USB thumb drive <i.e. Kingston 2GB>/SD card <i.e. Panasonic 1GB> and put it into the machine you are having problems getting ESXi 4u1 to boot with. (You need to do this prior to loading ESXi 4u1 on it so hopefully you try this before you run into the problem or you have multiple drives handy like I did)

2. When the system boots, press whatever key is required to access your boot menu (presuming you have this option <i.e. F12>

3. When the list comes up you'll see the list of devices you can boot from. In my case they are listed in categories (Removable Drives, HDDs, etc). Hopefully your list will also have it broken into categories and you will see that the freshly inserted USB thumb drive/SD card. You should notice that the drive is listed under HDD drives/fixed disks.

4. Reboot onto the ESXi 4u1 bootable install CD and run the installation and choose to install ESXi 4u1 on the USB thumb drive/SD card.

5. Once install is complete it should reboot and you'll see "Boot error" and if you hit any key it will then change to "root error" and sit there and do nothing.

6. Reboot again and access your boot menu and you will notice that post ESX install partitioning the drives, it is now listed under the "Removable Drives" section of you boot menu - basically it now says USB-ZIP instead of USB-HDD! (And I believe this is where the problem is)

I did some research on this and came across the following link:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=7916

Here I learned about another's trial with the same system but more importantly about a tool call RMPrepUSB. If I use the tool to reformat the USB/SD that I installed ESXi to and then choose the "2PTNS" option, it then marks the drive as USB-HDD again instead of USB-ZIP in the boot menu. (Note my bootable Windows recovery USB drive is listed as USB-HDD)

One of the files included with RMPrepUSB is the CLI backend called RMPartUSB. If I run that at the command line I see the following:

"NOTE: To change between from USB-ZIP and USB-HDD (on Netac or Lexar UFDs), try BootIt.exe v1.07 from http://www.filefront.com.BootIt.exe can change a UFD into a 'Fixed Disk'."

Unfortunately this didn't work for me as I do not have a Netac or Lexar drive.

So right now, presuming this is the issue, I think there may be an issue how VMware are flipping a particular bit on the drive when preparing it for usage that can cause some systems not too boot. I ended up resorting to using a regular HDD for installation however am interested in others thoughts on this and if this issue may be fixed in the future.

Thank you