Just read my previous mail There is unlikely to be one click solution, as vmtar is closed source & there is most likely never to be win32 port of it sebus
Sorry, I haven't forgotten about this project - I'm trying to find time to re-write it to make it quicker and easier to update when the extraction process changes and to allow the different method as used by donk with his osx unlocker on the insanelymac forums. I also intend to put it up on codeplex to allow others to get involved in improving it. I can't commit to any deadlines at this stage but it will be worth the wait..
new build out since nov 3rd, rated "important" (iSCSI related) Build Number: 504890 KB 2008017 Release Date: : 11/03/2011 vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal (choose ESXi 5.0) I hope we get some automated tool, for now I am using the manual BIOS440 method in the vmx file, not ideal with a lot of images running on a box, but better than nothing...
Yes, that's what "to allow the different method as used by donk with his osx unlocker on the insanelymac forums" means
can someone here then explain step by step how to do this, ignoring anything mac related, if this is done over SSH (putty), etc... as the donk explanation is a bit confusing to me (or my brain is gettin rusty!) edit: as I do not understand what to change with this mac unlocked to SLIC my ESXi5 (or is that included in this Mac unlocker?)
Thx Sebus I assume we must also look for s.v00 and not s.z as the 4.1 howto link uses? And that link is using linux, I guess we will have to use ssh to use esx command line itself, for executing all those linux commands?
Yes, of course s.v00, and yes, of course on ESXi via SSH In fact you could do most of it on Windows machine (almost all apart from vmtar bit) You do not even have to have ESX installed to make modifications as you could pick up s.v00 from inside of VMware_bootbank_esx-base_5.0.0-0.4.504890.vib (latest update) and open it with 7-zip And then run vmtar command on any x64 linux flavour. I posted vmtar link few posts back sebus
finally succeeded in SLICing build 504890 with a Dell cert. Was a bit of making sense of all information shrapnels, and undusting my Unix knowledge, but it is worth the effort Thanks to pix, sebus and others here for all their info, I used putty for step 1 & 2, the original pix tool for step 3 > 7, and putty again for step 8.
recreate the s.v00, was less hassle than introducing 3rd party code on the server Once you have this s.v00, you can slic any esx with the same buildnumber, thus I will only have to repeat step 1-7 when a new patch is released. And step 8 is just the copy part. Although I did do at the end: cd ~ cd bootbank rm s.v00 cp /vmfs/volumes/STORAGENAME/s.v00 s.v00 as I noticed doing immediately the cp command without deleting the original s.v00 resulted in a weird filesize each time.
No, there is NO 3rd party code of any kind, you did not understand the code obviously. You only gzip the 3 vmware files & add it to the load line In fact if you want to revert ESX to virgin state all you have to do is to remove this bit of a load line. Not something you can do as easily when replacing the whole s.v00 & replacing is not as elegant IMHO But if it works for you & you are happy... sebus
if you slic it without the darwin way, you add absolutely nothing, and so it looks genuine, hard to spot And reverting is simply putting the original s.v00 back in bootbank, not too difficult either IMO.
I didn't notice that ESXi could be modded the Workstation way. Could you please tell me how, if different? Does the same modded bios for Workstation work for Esxi too? I need a Dell 2.1 SLIC and SLP. I went to the s.v00 way but a configurable one would be better. Oh and, please, if different from the Workstation bios, could you, please again, post a DELL SLIC+SLP ESXi bios file? Thanks