Nick Wade

Recently I inherited a series of new products at Symantec that require several RedHat Enterprise Linux servers in order to operate, and so I decided (probably, foolishly) to provision my standby Windows laptop (a recent Lenovo Thinkpad T410 with 6GB of RAM) as a hypervisor in order to run a small test/familiarization/demo environment. I planned to manage it using the vSphere client on a Windows image (taken initially *from* that laptop by VMware Converter (standalone) running in Fusion on my day-to-day Macbook Pro. Any of those of you who've tried to use VMware's free hypervisor, ESXi, on anything not on the HCL have probably struggled with installation at some point, which is usually due to unsupported hardware and missing drivers, and this was no exception. 

Well, now with the help of various posts in the past at VM-Help (who also maintain their own HCL, known as the WHCL) I can report success - VMware ESXi 4.1 does install on such a small piece of hardware, albeit with a custom network driver that you must inject into a custom install ISO you create, before installing. Here I'm presenting the steps, in case this is of any use to you; 

*** Disclaimer: You will receive no support from VMware, and you'll likely receive a hefty ribbing from your cubemates should things go wrong and you begin gnashing your teeth/headbutting the desk/wailing in the corner.

1. Prepare. Download a few things;

a. VMware ESXi 4.1 (you'll need a VMware account, recall however that it's offered free)

b. The Intel e1000e2 custom OEM.tgz driver (I used the driver based on 1.1.19, created by a user on the VM-Help Forum)

c. Daniel Soderlund's mkesxiaio script from Google Code (customizes drivers and rebuilds the install .iso)

d. A working Linux box (I used an Ubuntu 10.10 desktop I had nearby, although there might be ways on Windows - I don't know)

2. Go to your Linux box. Put the first 3 download deliverables into one folder. There will be;

a. VMware ESXi install .iso

b. oem-8086-10f0-v1119.tgz

c. mkesxiaio_4.1.sh

3. Drop into a terminal, and change to that folder you've added the 3 files to. chmod +x the mkesxiaio_4.1.sh file so it can be executed. Run it, usually "./mkesxiaio_4.1" (without the quotes)

4.  Work through the questions. The easiest way to install (remember, my opinion) is to make a new installation .iso with your customer driver injected. I chose option 3) - ESXi 4.1, then option 1) - ISO installation. 

5. The script will ask you if you want to install a load of accessory software, ftp, ssh and the like. These are up to you; your mileage may vary and I suggest you read up on what these can do for you. I chose to not install any of these. 

6. The script will shortly ask you if you want to "add custom file from custom-esx (this is another folder the script itself creates). I said no. 

7. The script will then ask you if you want to edit respectively inetd.conf, pci.ids and simple.map. I said "No" to editing inetd.conf, and "Yes" to editing pci.ids and simple.map. Here's why, and it's the critical part;

– The Thinkpad T410 uses an Intel 82577LM network interface. 
– The 82577LM has a PCI address of 8086:10ea. This is important. 
– The drivers for this are what you wish to inject, and are in that oem_xxx.tgz file you added to the folder
– The mkesxiaio_xx.sh script watches for any oem_xxx.tgz file and injects those into your new custom install .iso it will build momentarily
– YOU need to edit pci.ids and simple.map to tell ESXi that you've done so, and that it should load these new drivers
– The mkesxiaio_xx.sh script will allow you to make the edits during it's processing

• Edits

• (I just scrolled to the section, removed the existing 10ea definitions, and added the above line)

• (similarly, scroll to the relevant section, make the edit to include the line above)

• In both cases, use the pico/nano commands CTRL+o and CTRL+x to writeout your file (save changes) and exit. The script will move on as you do.