Questions regarding the proper use of Pix's ESX BIOS Tools Good evening, everyone. I’m a long time MDL reader making his first post. In an effort to learn more about this subject, I, like many others on this site, could use your collective advice. I have an HP SLIC and certificate that work flawlessly when used with VMware Server. I’d now like to use them on an ESXi machine (version 4.1.0, build 348481) installed on a USB flash drive. However, after copying my trusted SLIC to the virtual machine’s folder via WinSCP, as well as adding the bios440.filename line to the virtual machine’s VMX file, said machine won’t start. Unfortunately, there’s not even an error message for me to research, just a completely black console screen. When the SLIC and bios440.filename line are removed, the virtual machine powers up like a champ. Does anybody know what I’m doing wrong? Since the method outlined above didn’t work, I decided to try the ESXi BIOS modification route. Given the complexities of the same, I first read a great many posts (and I do mean a GREAT many) about Pix’s ESX BIOS Tools. However, because I'm so new to the forums, I can't list any of them here. At any rate, I couldn’t find any that explain how to actually use Pix’s tools. To that end, could somebody out there please help me with the following? How do I use objcopy64 to extract the ESXi BIOS? Do I need to copy it to my server before running it, or should I run it from a physical XP machine via PuTTY? Do I need to include the syntax outlined in one of the posts I mentioned above? I thought I read that the tool is now automated. Please feel free to reply by posting to this thread and/or sending me a PM. Many thanks!
You need to run the 'EsxBiosTools.exe' file. There's further explanation in the 'readme.txt' file in the archive. No need to mess with any of the other files - they are just used by the tool.
Download problems Yes, you'll have download problems if you don't buy RapidShare Pro. But you can get it by copying the link, changing it to http instead of https and go from there. RapidShare will then let free users download it.
I've an ESXi server running 6 VM with Windows Server 2003 (All lincensed). What will this mod do for me?
It might, if you mod yourself the VMware BIOS to include SLP string (that is used by XP/2003) and you convert the 2003 install to be OEM But if you are already running 6 x Server 2003 VM then you are most likely using VLK anyway, so no need to do anthing sebus
short Q not covered here: do I need to leave ESX 4.1 in SSH/debug mode once the bios has been injected?
since the tool crashed all the time on me (I was using a vista sp2 x86 testbox) (asa it connected fine to the ESXi 4.1 update 1 server, the windows popup appeared that the program stopped responding) I found a workaround for those eager to slicstream their images. Download from the freeware VeeamFASTSCP, then use it to put the bios (eg: yourslicbiosname.ROM) in the dir of the image, copy over the tiny .vmx textfile locally, edit it with notepad and add the line bios440.filename = "yourslicbiosname.ROM", save it back, reboot the image (not ESXi!) and you are all set! And this method does not required ESXi to be in SSH mode.
can you explain more in detail why vmotion would not pick it up? I am interested to understand how your tool works (although I cannot use it for now as it keeps crashing, will try tomorrow on a few more OSes)
Ask Vmware, it simply does NOT work (tested by me) Just try it on a plain install (XP/7 no matter), it is not difficult to even make VM for that purpose! The tool does work fine sebus
You can do all of this with the vsphere client and without the need for 3rd party tools at all by the way. If you are just playing around with a standalone ESXi server then it's the better way to go imo. I put the bios in a top level folder in the datastore and reference it by ../bios/bios440.rom from any vm. Much less hassle if you have to upgrade ESXi. There are threads here about the Vmotion limitation and the non 3rd party way of doing what you suggested - have a search around. The tool is probably crashing because you don't have .NET 2 or 3.5 installed, at a guess.
it was a standalone server I reran the tool on a 7x64 and there it did not crash, just took a while to untar & retar, but it seemed to have done the trick Only feature I would like to see is a button to save the output log to a file. Looks like a decent tool
Look in the working folder for a file called output.log. I'd read through this whole thread when you get a sec too - quite a few of your questions have been covered.