The commands vicfg-nics.pl (esxcfg-nics.pl) are used to manage the physical NIC ports in your ESXi host. The VMkernel will identify each NIC port as vmnicX where X is a number starting with 0. The following options are available –list (-l) – this will list the current NIC ports in the system including VMkernel name, PCI …
The commands vicfg-advcfg.pl (esxcfg-advcfg.pl) are used to change Advanced Settings for your host as you would with the VI client (see Configuration \ Advanced Settings. Typically these settings would be changed only under the guidance of VMware Support or a knowledge base article. The vicfg-advcfg.pl command has the following options. Sample session vicfg-advcfg.pl –server esx10.mishchenko.net –get LVM.DisallowSnapshot …
The commands vicfg-cfgbackup.pl (esxcfg-cfgbackup.pl) allow you to backup and restore the configuration of your ESX 3i host. To backup the host you would run the command. To restore your backup configuration to your host you would run. This will cause the host to reboot once the process is complete. NOTES While this command can be used to …
Some users have experienced a problem when booting ESXi for the first time after an install in which an error in the sfcbd process (typically the error is something like Exception type 13 in world 1381:sfcbd) which causes a PSOD (purple screen of death) on the host. The PSOD error may also be like “exception …
oem.tgz is a file used by ESXi to customize the installation. With this file you can replace default files that ESXi uses or add additional files to the install. Below are some sample files which enable support for various storage controllers. Please search the forum for other files. Notes:1) ESXi 3.5 Update 4 includes some support for …
When you first install ESXi your host will be given a hostname of “localhost” and domain of “localdomain”. You can change this at the console or with the VI client. Using the Console 1) Press <F2> (Customize System)2) Select Configure Management Network3) Select DNS Configuration4) Select the option “Use the following DNS server addresse and …
Changing your host’s network name and SSL certificate Read More »
ESXi uses SYSLINUX as its boot loader and thus it is possible to add options to customize the initial SYSLINUX boot screen. In the below example we will modify syslinux.cfg to allow for a 200 second boot delay. 1) Boot your ESXi install with a Linux live CD. The SYSLINUX files are on a FAT16 …
As with any system there may arise a situation in which the root login has been misplaced or forgotten. The below process will show you how to reset the password for root back to a blank password. This is not supported by VMware and you might consider running a repair install of ESXi instead of …
The procedure below documents the commands necessary to run a check of the system partitions of ESXi. The below image shows the output of fdisk -l and the partitions which will be checked are circled. The 2 partitions consisting of 49136 blocks are the Hypervisor1 and Hypervisor2 partitions. These are mounted by ESXi as /bootbank and /altbootbank …
ESXi – Run a File System Check on System Partitions Read More »
There are several methods available to patch ESX 3i hosts when the server is deployed without VirtualCenter. First, one can use the VMware Infrastructure Update client to up the host, second, second the host can be updated with the RCLI command vihostupdate.pl and lastly one can install the patch using the remoteInstall utility that comes bundled in …
