Hello Gladi8tor,
Please try the following:
Adding custom drivers to ESX 4.1 installation CD
To add a custom drivers to the ESX 4.1 installation CD two major steps are necessary. In this case we will add the driver called “be2net“ to support HPs BL460c G7 Blades.
1. Download the driver. In the case of “be2net” it can be obtained from vmware.com
2. Extract the driver RPM package from the downloaded ISO image.
3. Add the RPM package to the VMware ESX installation CD. All the RPMs are located in a folder called VMware/RPMs.
This can be done using a ISO editor e.g. MagicISO. I recommend not to use PowerISO because it changes the MD5 hash of the image and the installer will detect it as damaged.
4. Add a line/entry for the additional driver in the following files:
• VMware/RPMs/TRANS.TBL (if the file doesn’t exist skip this)
• VMware/base/comps.xml
• Packages.xml
5. Delete the file VMware/RPMs/packageData.pkl; we will create a new one during the next steps.
6. Extract the RPMs folder and the file misc/createinstdepot.py from the CD to a machine running python.
7. Execute:
createinstdepot.py RPMs
This will create a new packageData.pkl in the temporary RPMs folder
8. Copy the newly created packageData.pkl back to the CD
The above steps have integrated the driver RPM into the CD and the installer will install the package during installation but will not detect the NICs itself. To have the installer itself detect the device we will have to add the driver module to the ramdisk containing the installer. This step is necessary because the installation of ESX will fail if no network card is found. If you try an installation using kickstart you need to have all nics detected by the installer as well, because otherwise it may mix up the numbering on next boot.
1. Extract the driver module (in this case: be2net.o) from the RPM package or the ZIP file contained in the driver ISO image. The file is packaged several times using different packaging formats. I managed this using 7-Zip because it can handle all the package formats needed.
2. Extract the pciids file (in this case: be2net.xml) the same way.
3. Extract isolinux/initrd.img from the ESX installation CD and copy it to a Linux machine.
4. Unpack the image:
gunzip < initrd.img | cpio –i -–make-directories
5. Copy the driver module (be2net.o) to the directory usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/ of the extacted ramdisk.
6. Copy the pciids file (be2net.xml) to the folder usr/share/hwdata/pciids/
7. Recreate the ramdisk again:
find ./ | cpio –H newc –o > initrd.cpio
gzip initrd.cpio
mv initrd.cpio.gz initrd.img
Take care not to include the original ramdisk in the new one. Move it away before starting with the lines above.
8. Replace the original isolinux/initrd.img with the one created.
Good luck and kind regards,
Tobias
Von: Gladi8tor communities-emailer@vmware.com
Gesendet: Freitag, 29. März 2013 03:50
Betreff: Re: Slipstreaming with ESX4.1 ISO New message: "Slipstreaming with ESX4.1 ISO" Re: Slipstreaming with ESX4.1 ISO
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Slipstreaming with ESX4.1 ISO
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