Install

fire up the vm, then run the following after initiating a vmware tools install…

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom cd /tmp tar zxf /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-x.x.x.gz cd vmware-tools-disstrib ./vmware-install.pl

Then just follow the prompts through to the end.

If your running fedora or similar make sure your’ve got gcc and kernel headers…. (you’ll probably have to update kernel too)

yum update shutdown -r now yum install -y gcc make kernel-devel perl

Ubuntu 12.x

apt-get install open-vm-tools

I ran through a pkg verify the other day and came across a lot of errors. Running the subsequent pkg fix command presented me with this…

pkg: Requested “install” operation would affect files that cannot be modified in live image.

Please retry this operation on an alternate boot environment.

This is the fix….

mkdir /mnt/osol-134fix beadm create osol-134fix beadm mount osol-134fix /mnt/osol-134fix pkg -R /mnt/osol-134fix fix –accept beadm activate osol-134fix

First format your usb / flash drive with FAT. Then copy all the contents of the installer .iso onto the drive.

Next delete isolinux.bin and rename isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg

Edit syslinux.cfg and append “usb” to the line starting with “append” … i.e. similar to this

append vmkboot.gz — vmkernel.gz — sys.vgz — cim.vgz — ienviron.tgz — image.tgz — install.tgz usb

Next grab the latest syslinux.exe (zip for windows) from here and run syslinux -s –ma :

I’ve had a couple of installation issues with ESX4

One was particularly strange, the install process would freeze every now and again until i pressed a key on the keyboard. This was related to AMD’s power saving C1 mode - disable this in the bios to fix this problem.

Secondly it was a problem with my nic. Essentially i didn’t have card that was supported (realtek). After inserting a intel card all was well. This fires up a ambiguous error and cans the whole install. (lvmdriver error)