ESX / ESXi Bios Tools

Because 4.1 become fully x64, I believe

sebus

 

It works with the objbump and objcopy versions comming with an debian 64 bit version. Section name of .bios440 in vmx file is now only bios440 without the leading point. Apart from that and the unnamed file sys.vgz the procedure is the same as for 4.0.

 

Well, I have actually used a vmfs drive for packing. In my system i have a Datastore4 where i have done the packing and unpacking. So far it has worked very well. Using a x64 linux is exactly what i have done next for extracting the bios. I used a debian distribution. The install of vmware tools then also installs the binutils which include the needed version of objdump and objcopy.
Maybe for you tool it could be a solution to install this binutils to the esxi as a first step. Then the extaction of the bios file could be done on the esxi side too.
Although i could not really use your tool it was a great help for me telling me what is to do next. Thanks for that!

 

Hi, until an automated tool is available, do you mind writing a step-to-step tutorial on how to do it manually? I have a Ubuntu server I can use for unpacking, I am planning on upgrading my vSphere server to version 4.1. I am not so good on linux (still learning) but I can follow steps.
Thanks!

 

Yes, manual guide would be great, need to do it to my vS 4.1 as well

sebus

 

Please please please

Any news? this will be of great help!

 

OK, that is what I have done:

Step 1: Enable SSH on ESXi Server
On ESXi console press F2 to configure the System. login as root. Go to "Troubleshooting Mode Options" and enable "Remote Tech Support (SSH)". Leave with Esc.
Step 2: Installing an x64 Linux.
I can't provide a full installation guide. But I can shortly tell what I have done.
First I downloaded a debian net install cd: cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/5.0.5/amd64/iso-cd/debian-505-amd64-netinst.iso
After burning it to cd I have installed it as a virtual machine in my ESXi Server. Now the vmware tools have to be installed to the new system. Unfortunately this is not as easy as for a windows system. But with a little help of Google this can be managed. In my case this installation installs also the needed binutilities.
Step 3: Finding the s.z file on ESXi
To find the location of s.z use winscp.exe. This tool coming with pix's EsxBiostTools. Start it and connect as root to your ESXi server. Don't forget to change the protocol to SCP.
On the left side of the window you see your windows system on the right side is the ESXi server. Goto /vmfs/volumes/Hypervisor1. If the file is there, remember the location. If it is not, check Hypervisor2 and Hypervisor3. In that case you have to adapt the statements below.
Step 4: Getting the vmx file
Now we need a remote shell to execute same statements. For that I used putty.exe. Start the program, connect to your ESXi Server and login as root. If the location of s.z is not Hypervisor1 you have to correct the statements.

~ # mkdir /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t1

~ # mkdir /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t2

~ # cp /vmfs/volumes/Hypervisor1/s.z /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t1/s.gz

~ # gunzip /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t1/s.gz

~ # vmtar -x /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t1/s -o /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t1/s.tar

~ # tar xf /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t1/s.tar -C /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t2/

Start again winscp.exe. Goto /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t2/bin. Copy the vmx file to your x64 Linux into /tmp/

Step 5: Extract bios440.rom from vmx
After you have copied the vmx file to /tmp/ on your x64 Linux start a shell on this system and execute the following commands:

~ # objdump --headers /tmp/vmx

Now you are getting a list of all sections included in vmx. There must be one section named bios440

~ # objcopy /tmp/vmx --output-target=binary --only-section=bios440 --set-section-flags bios440=alloc /tmp/bios440.rom.zl

Now copy the file /tmp/bios440.rom.zl from your Linux system back to c:\temp on your windows system

Step 6: Extracting bios440.rom.zl
Unfortunately this is still not yet the needed rom file. We have to decompress it, too. Therfore download:
componentace.com/data/distr/zlib.NET.zip
In \zlib\demo\Visual Studio 2005\VB.NET\CompressFile\bin you will find CompressFile.exe. Use this tool to decompress bios440.rom.zl to bios440.rom
Now we have the needed bios.

Step 7: Compress bios440.rom
After you have modified the bios file we have to put it back into the vmx file. To do so first use CompressFile.exe to compress it to bios440_2.rom.zl. Then copy the
file to your Linux system into /tmp/

Step 8: Delete section bios440 from vmx file
Before we can put the new file bios440_2.rom.zl into vmx file we have to delete the old section. Do this on your Linux system by executing:

~ # objcopy --remove-section bios440 /tmp/vmx

Execute

~ # objdump --headers /tmp/vmx

to check if the section is removed.

Step 9: Put bios440_2.rom.zl into vmx
Execute:
~ # objcopy --add-section bios440=/tmp/bios440_2.rom.zl /tmp/vmx

And check again:
~ # objdump --headers /tmp/vmx

If everything is OK copy the vmx file back to your ESXi server to /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t2/bin. Overwrite the existing one.

Step10: Build a new s.z file
To build the new s.z file on your ESXi (putty.exe) execute:

~ # chmod 755 /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t2/bin/vmx

~ # chmod u+s /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t2/bin/vmx

~ # chown 201:201 /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t2/bin/vmx

~ # rm -R /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t1/

~ # mkdir /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t1/

~ # cd /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t2/; tar cf /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t1/s.tar *

~ # vmtar -c /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t1/s.tar -o /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t1/s.tar.vtar

~ # gzip /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t1/s.tar.vtar

That is the file we want. If you execute the following statement the original s.z will be replaced!!!!!!!!!!!:

~ # mv /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t1/s.tar.vtar.gz /vmfs/volumes/Hypervisor1/s.z

Clean up:

~ # rm -R /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t1/

~ # rm -R /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/t2/

Good luck, torx

 

Going to try it step for stap and give everyone some feedback

 

That is awesome! , Thanks so much.. I will give it a try soon... I'll report how it goes...

 

Works Great!!!!

The instructions worked great. I have added some comments:

1. Instead of building a brand new x64 linux VM, I just downloaded the following Minimal CentOS 5.5 x64 VA:

www .vmware.com/appliances/directory/575943 <remove the space after www>

once you have network sorted you'll want to install the Xlib compression pkg by issuing:

yum update perl-Compress-Zlib

I couldn't find CompressFile.exe and couldn't be bothered compiling my own, so I used the x64 linux to do the decompressing by issuing the following:

$ perl -e 'use Compress::Zlib; my $v; read STDIN, $v, [bios440.rom.zl size in bytes]; $v = uncompress($v); print $v;' < bios440.rom.zl > bios440.rom

Again, I used the linux VM to do the compressing:

perl -e 'use Compress::Zlib; my $v; read STDIN, $v, 524288; $v = compress($v); print $v;' < bios440_mod.rom > bios440_mod.rom.zl

Thanks a lot to all!!

Having done all that, an automated tool would be excellent!!

 

Guys, I had dell modded bios for esxi vw4.0 (thanks alien2xx!) Now I tried to move to 4.1. Think ESXi Bios Tools works fine (thanks pix and torxx666!) I upgraded one of the esxi servers with vSphere Update managers to 4.1. Extracted new bios with ESXi tool. Got rom and rom.zl files (why I need zl?). Then modded rom file with phoenix tool 1.42 and Rw1.4 to dell slic. Injected new bios back. Anyway when virtual machines running they are not genuine. I did hex compare for pairs of modded and unmodded bioses for 4.0 and new 4.1 and found that 4.0 bioses have significant difference between unmodded and modded bioses, but 4.1 pair has just minor difference. Did anyone tried to move 4.1 (dell slic) with success and how amend new bios properly? Thanks for help!

 

Sadly it does not work on ESX 3.5.0 build-130756

The problem is with objcopy 2.20:

objcopy: Unable to recognise the format of the input file `C:\ESXBiosTools\vmware-vmx'

objcopy 2.19 & 2.19.1 do not complain, but output only 0k file, v2.18 does not complain, but also outputs 0k

objdump works fine:

Code:

objdump.exe --headers vmware-vmx

vmware-vmx:     file format elf32-little

Sections:
Idx Name          Size      VMA       LMA       File off  Algn
27 .bios440      00033fe0  00000000  00000000  0048fd2f  2**0
                 CONTENTS, READONLY

sebus

 

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Version 2.18, 2.19 & 2.19.1 all work fine, but I see that you now made the extraction command being correct:

objcopy.exe "/ESXBiosTools/vmware-vmx" --output-target=binary --only-section=.bios440 --set-section-flags .bios440=alloc "bios440.rom.zl"

Previous version of EsxBiosTools was missing the . (dot) before bios440, hence it was outputting 0k

Well done! Perfect tool!

sebus

 

Strange, not check 'updated' or build in boot.cfg ? EsxBiosTools.v1.1.2 read OLD bios440.rom from 'Hypervisor2' and put to 'Hypervisor2' ! :-(
So, reboot ESXi read bios from new build and my bios modify not uses. :-(

Code:

Copying sys.vgz from HypervisorX folders
# cp /vmfs/volumes/Hypervisor1/sys.vgz /vmfs/volumes/4c215666-f126ea0b-9b42-002655555c12/vmvisor-sys/sys.gz
# cp /vmfs/volumes/Hypervisor2/sys.vgz /vmfs/volumes/4c215666-f126ea0b-9b42-002655555c12/vmvisor-sys/sys.gz
# cp /vmfs/volumes/Hypervisor3/sys.vgz /vmfs/volumes/4c215666-f126ea0b-9b42-002655555c12/vmvisor-sys/sys.gz
No sys.vgz in Hypervisor3 folder
Gunzipping sys.gz to vtar file

Hm, read last sys.gz from Hypervisor :-(

Code:

/vmfs/volumes/386a41e4-ff1587ba-1385-2feaeed494ad # cd ../Hypervisor1
/vmfs/volumes/386a41e4-ff1587ba-1385-2feaeed494ad # cat boot.cfg 
kernel=vmkboot.gz
kernelopt=
modules=vmk.gz --- sys.vgz --- cim.vgz --- oem.tgz --- license.tgz --- mod.tgz --- vpxa.vgz --- aam.vgz
build=4.0.0-2.17.261974
updated=5
bootstate=0

/vmfs/volumes/386a41e4-ff1587ba-1385-2feaeed494ad # cd ../Hypervisor2
/vmfs/volumes/8c7e2fe8-f4c58d9f-34d3-8553ffee79a0 # cat boot.cfg 
kernel=vmkboot.gz
kernelopt=
modules=vmk.gz --- sys.vgz --- cim.vgz --- oem.tgz --- license.tgz --- mod.tgz --- vpxa.vgz --- aam.vgz
build=4.0.0-1.13.256968
updated=4
bootstate=0

In getted bios - my old data, from build 256968:
0000043C50: 00 01 00 48 50 51 4F 45 │ 4D 53 4C 49 43 2D 4D 50 ☺ HPQOEMSLIC-MP

PS My ESXi start from USB!
PSPS Sorry for my bad english please.