Comments on: PXE Booting VMware ESX 4.0

By: Heidi Vuolera

Heidi Vuolera — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 18:10:17 +0000

I also am having problems being stuck at 97% , has there been an update or fix for this ?

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 20:33:27 +0000

Ceri,

Any updates on your M1000e experience w/PXE?

By: Frans

Frans — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 21:33:02 +0000

When the auto installation ends at 97%, then their must be an error bij the %post install. Can you post the settings from the %post config

By: Marcos

Marcos — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 01:09:38 +0000

I need help. My situation is as follows.

I have ESX servers running on Blade Center HP. The connections with my Data Center are all in trunk mode.

I have a network card (NIC) of NOC and SOC in this where run my Service Console (Mode Trunk).

I have the ESX virtualized servers, Citrix Provisioning Manager, XenApp to create a VDI solution for my end users.

My DHCP server is a Network Appliance Cisco (Catalyst Switch) and it set the options 66 and 67 providing IP from my TFTP server (Citrix Provisioning) and Boot File (.bin).

When the station is initialized, the Appliance cisco provides a IP for the machine but it can not connect to the TFTP server, which is in another VLAN. I have a VLAN to station and a VLAN for servers.

Should I create another VLAN just for the PXE and include this VLAN on the native vlan on the network settings for the trunk port for the service work? Should create another virtual switch in ESX without a tag vlan?

By: windows tips

windows tips — Sun, 02 May 2010 09:54:18 +0000

I am having ther same issue as the ones reported by Paul…auto installation esx4. get to 97% and right after that it stops…please can anyone troubleshoots this?

By: slowe

slowe — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 12:02:03 +0000

Yiping,

In theory, there’s no reason you couldn’t use HTTP or NFS. I tested it with FTP, so that’s what I described.

By: Yiping

Yiping — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:39:20 +0000

Does it have to use FTP for ks.cfg? Would HTTP or NFS work ?

By: paul

paul — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:30:16 +0000

can you help me trouble shoot the following. ftp auto installation esx4. get to 97%, then aborts. script is installing everything else, my last resort was modifying isolinux.cfg

95% complete-making the initial ramdisk
error: unable to regenerate initrd, system in unknown state. please
check log files for errors and correct before rebooting

error: failed to update /boot/trouble.
error: /usr/sbin/esxcfg-boot failed, examine /var/log/vmware/esxcfg-boot

95% complete-writing GRUB to the master boot record
97% complete-boot setup
No.
installation aborted

[Errno 2] no such file or directory: ‘/mnt/sysimage/boot/initrd.img’
see /var/log/esx_install.log

press to reboot

By: Niels

Niels — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:31:09 +0000

It is possible to use vlan’s during a PXE deployment. Add vlanid=### to the APPEND line, and of you go.

Mrepo (http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/mrepo/) can be handy to create a installation repository (for ESX or other RPM based Linux distro’s), it also copies the relevant PXE files and puts them on the right tftp spot.

Best regards,
Niels

By: Jose Ruelas

Jose Ruelas — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:24:09 +0000

quick question: should not the post be called PXE Install instead of PXE boot??

kind regards
Jose Ruelas