Comments on: VMware ESXi 5 Interactive PXE Installation Improvements

By: andy

andy — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 06:27:36 +0000

Hello Johan,

try this on the firtst reboot.

reboot –noeject

Andy

By: Johan

Johan — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:59:15 +0000

listen here: all I can say ……this install is like a knife throught butter.

Funny thing, I have a datacentre where the cdroms eject after the install…Wonder if there is a way to stop it from opening?

Thanks, and its a big thanks for your post…coming from pxe esx4 to esxi4 all flavours, nightmare!!!! to this one that just worked.

By: Ryan Smith

Ryan Smith — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 21:32:37 +0000

Additionally an easier way is if you have your OS or ESXi .iso locally from a device you can boot to it and install via Dell DRAC card.

1. connected DRAC and went in to virtual console
2. mapped virtual media in console (using DRAC6 version) to my bootable esxi 5.1 flash drive.
3. Installed ESXi as I normally would to the local (remote) storage or media.

By: Justin

Justin — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 19:54:55 +0000

Cheers, works for 5.1 to

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 05:47:29 +0000

Worked like a charm. brilliant. thanks VM

By: Ken Hall

Ken Hall — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 20:05:47 +0000

You are a godsend! I have read all the sites that talk about setting up esxi5 under a pxeboot environment including william lam, the person you mentioned as the guru. Even his site didn’t explain this so concisely or accurately for that matter. Thank you, I now have a PXEboot environment that serves up i386/x86_64 versions of centos as well as ESXi5 thanks to you and your readers comments.

By: stefan

stefan — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:55:28 +0000

I really don`t understand why you copy the files from /tmp to /esx5 or winscp to wherever

It makes no sense except you wanna waste storage.

You have your ISO image on disk… so all you need to do is to mount it as described and point to the directory. You can even do it with automounter

auto.iso

* -fstype=iso9660,ro,loop :/nfs/nas01/ISOs/links/&

All you need to have is a directory on the nas where you link to the iso and thats it.
Hope it helps. I setup a complete kickstart env just with iso`s

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 09:33:01 +0000

I get a Fatal error: 15 (Not found) when trying to “Configuration error while parsing /esxi5/boot.cfg.

In the tftp log i see that “Read request for file ” not working because //, but where does it come from???

Thanks Andy

By: meskaya

meskaya — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:06:28 +0000

Just use a newer version of pxelinux.0 (download one of the archive from http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/ and find inside it in core folder pxelinux.0)

By: Derek, and Sylvia » [VMware] ESXi 5 interactive PXE installation

Derek, and Sylvia » [VMware] ESXi 5 interactive PXE installation — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 04:43:31 +0000

[...] 5.5, 但是依照ESXi5 PXE installation的設定, 輸入完label name後畫面就全黑沒反應, [...]