ESXi 5.x - pre-built VMDK for unRAID

[BetaQuasi]

Yep I'm aware, will be an updated one on this thread in about 12 hours.

[WeeboTech]

 

I would wait a while.  There are problems with the syslinux.cfg and the default boot option.

If the Virtual machine has less then 4GB unRAID it will not come up or it's going crash at some point in time.

 

Either that or edit the syslinux.cfg and move the default from the mem=4095M entry to the entry without it.

 

It would be easier to upgrade unRAID live! if unzip were part of the standard distro.

 

You could do a mount of the virtual disk, wget the latest entry, unzip bzimage/bzroot into /tmp.

copy them to the virtual disk and reboot.

[mrow]

 

I would wait a while.  There are problems with the syslinux.cfg and the default boot option.

If the Virtual machine has less then 4GB unRAID it will not come up or it's going crash at some point in time.

 

Either that or edit the syslinux.cfg and move the default from the mem=4095M entry to the entry without it.

 

 

Or just not update the syslinux.cfg at all and leave the one from RC12a or RC13. That's what I did.

[garycase]

 

I would wait a while.  There are problems with the syslinux.cfg and the default boot option.

If the Virtual machine has less then 4GB unRAID it will not come up or it's going crash at some point in time.

 

Either that or edit the syslinux.cfg and move the default from the mem=4095M entry to the entry without it.

 

Probably the easiest option 

... in fact, it's exactly the same as the one distributed with RC14 EXCEPT it doesn't have the 4 lines that force the 4GB option.

 

 

Or just not update the syslinux.cfg at all and leave the one from RC12a or RC13. That's what I did.

[BetaQuasi]

Sorry guys still at work as of 22:30 (local time here) - this will be a weekend job now.

[BetaQuasi]

Just a quick note - not going to bother with rc14.  Will do a rc15 vmdk sometime in the next 24 hours, unless the final comes out.

 

Sent from my GT-N7105T using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

[WeeboTech]

@Beta, do you think you could put the unzip binary on the .vmdk perhaps in the bin directory?

 

It would allow people to mount the filesystem.

Issue a wget and unzip the files they need directly on the .vmdk

 

Only reason I suggest this is unzip is not part of the standard distro.

 

Is it possible to expand the .vmdk to a larger capacity without actually increasing it's size?

 

I.E. enough for 3-4 versions of unRAID.

 

production/stable

RC

development

.zip archive.

 

Also, do you have a default LABEL on the virtual disk?

I know mine say BOOT, but I also remember changing them on purpose so I could mount them via -L

 

mkdir /mnt/bootvmdk

mount -L BOOT /mnt/bootvmdk

 

It's silly, but I cannot remember if the BOOT label is from your default or mine.

 

My issue regarding label and size is specific to developing some workarounds via the booting rc scripts.

So I need to unpack and repack the bzroot while keeping a few versions around.

 

I figured if you make the associated changes, people can also help themselves with the support program and space to grab the .zip archive.

[BetaQuasi]

Rc15 added to first post - @Weebotech, very time poor at the moment but those are great ideas and will look at including perhaps with the next release

 

Sent from my GT-N7105T using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

[BetaQuasi]

Re boot - all my releases have that volume label. Re expanding the disk, the vmdk is 1Gb so we could expand the included partition to fill that easily enough. 

 

With unzip, if I can get specifics as I'm not overly familiar with slackware or where to put the binary once I have it.

 

Cheers

 

Sent from my GT-N7105T using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

[WeeboTech]

infozip is available here as a slackware package.

 

http://slackbuilds.org/mirror/slackware/slackware-13.37/slackware/a/infozip-6.0-i486-1.txz'>http://slackbuilds.org/mirror/slackware/slackware-13.37/slackware/a/infozip-6.0-i486-1.txz

http://slackbuilds.org/mirror/slackware/slackware-13.37/slackware/a/

 

wget the file.

then do installpkg infozip-6.0-i486-1.txz

 

this will install zip and unzip.

 

mkdir a bin directory on the .vmdk filesystem.

copy the unzip program into that bin directory. (or leave it in the root directory, that's up to you).

 

This allows more tech savy people to

mkdir /mnt/bootvmdk

mount -L BOOT /mnt/bootvmdk

cd /mnt/bootvmdk

wget the newest unRAID.zip archive.

 

unzip the bzimage and bzroot right on the .vmdk.

./unzip "unRAID Server***.zip" bzimage

./unzip "unRAID Server***.zip" bzroot

 

 

Perhaps in the future we'll even be able to pull out the unRAID version number from the bzroot and name the bzimage/bzroot accordingly.

 

For now having the unzip binary immediately available makes it easier to help oneself.

i.e. Unless we can get Tom to include zip/unzip on the distro.

 

[mejutty]

I do it the old fashioned way download the vmdk to my pc mount change the files then upload.  If you are going to mount the boot volume why not just share it out as say vmflash then update as you would the usual flash share??  That being said I do all my work from a windows machine as as little as possible at a Unix prompt

[WeeboTech]

I do it the old fashioned way download the vmdk to my pc mount change the files then upload.  If you are going to mount the boot volume why not just share it out as say vmflash then update as you would the usual flash share??  That being said I do all my work from a windows machine as as little as possible at a Unix prompt

 

I do all of my unix work from the unix command line.

This is my trade and I can type fast enough that it's faster for me to do it that way.

it's also my 'usual' way I update the flash files.

 

wget

unzip

reboot

 

[savestheday]

Anyone using the RC14 vmtools with RC15?  I know that Zeron hasn't had a chance to recompile against the newest kernel but I want to make sure before I upgrade. 

[siamsquare]

when will we see an update?

Ty

[Wimpie]

when will we see an update?

 

It's quite easy to do yourself.

 

-Stop unraid (power down)

-with another (not running at this moment) windows VM on the machine:

-- edit the windows machine settings and add a hard disk

-- select existing vmk, and select the unraid vmk

-boot this windows VM, you'll see it has an extra drive/HD

-copy all files from the unraid vmk to a backup place

-copy bzimage, bzroot, make_bootable.bat, memtest, menu.c32, syslinux.cfg & syslinux.exe to this unraid vmk (16c files off course).

-stop (shutdown) the windows VM

-edit the settings of the windows VM to remove the unraid vmk

- pull the unraid flash drive and put the 16c Zeron VMtools .tgz file on the flash drive (/extra dir), remove any other VMtools package from the flash drive (.plg and/or .tgz file)

- copy bzimage, bzroot, make_bootable.bat, memtest, menu.c32, syslinux.cfg & syslinux.exe to the flash drive (16c files off course), backup old files on flash drive first.

 

start the unraid VM (in viclient so you see what is happening)

if unraid does not start (does not display the unraid boot menu), then you need to run make_bootable.bat

-do the above again until the vmk is visible in the windows VM

-run make_bootable.bat (as admin)

-if it complains (no removeable drive, use -f option), change

"%~d0\syslinux -ma %~d0" into

"%~d0\syslinux -fma %~d0" and

run make_bootable.bat again (as admin)

-shut down the windows VM and remove the unraid vmk

-now unraid should boot...

 

 

Warning  : This is all from memory, did it a week ago

[graywolf]

when will we see an update?

 

It's quite easy to do yourself.

 

-Stop unraid (power down)

-with another (not running at this moment) windows VM on the machine:

-- edit the windows machine settings and add a hard disk

-- select existing vmk, and select the unraid vmk

-boot this windows VM, you'll see it has an extra drive/HD

-copy all files from the unraid vmk to a backup place

-copy bzimage, bzroot, make_bootable.bat, memtest, menu.c32, syslinux.cfg & syslinux.exe to this unraid vmk (16c files off course).

-stop (shutdown) the windows VM

-edit the settings of the windows VM to remove the unraid vmk

- pull the unraid flash drive and put the 16c Zeron VMtools .tgz file on the flash drive (/extra dir), remove any other VMtools package from the flash drive (.plg and/or .tgz file)

- copy bzimage, bzroot, make_bootable.bat, memtest, menu.c32, syslinux.cfg & syslinux.exe to the flash drive (16c files off course), backup old files on flash drive first.

 

start the unraid VM (in viclient so you see what is happening)

if unraid does not start (does not display the unraid boot menu), then you need to run make_bootable.bat

-do the above again until the vmk is visible in the windows VM

-run make_bootable.bat (as admin)

-if it complains (no removeable drive, use -f option), change

"%~d0\syslinux -ma %~d0" into

"%~d0\syslinux -fma %~d0" and

run make_bootable.bat again (as admin)

-shut down the windows VM and remove the unraid vmk

-now unraid should boot...

 

 

Warning  : This is all from memory, did it a week ago

 

I did similar recently but I did have to remove the vmk hard disk from the unRaid VM before bringing up the Windows VM and then later readd the vmk hard disk back to unRaid VM.

 

[BetaQuasi]

To be honest I wasn't going to bother updating again until final is final. If folks want it though I can get around to it this weekend.

 

Sent from my GT-N7105T using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

[mrow]

That explanation above was way more complicated than it needed to be. This way can be done from a Windows VM or any Windows PC with the vSphere Client installed.

 

Install the VMWare Virtual Disk Dev Kit, mount an older version of the vmdk with VMware-mount.exe, replace bzroot, bzimage and syslinux.cfg with the current version, unmount the vmdk, shutdown the unraid VM and upload the vmdk to the datastore via the vSphere client to replace your old vmdk, right click it and hit inflate, and then boot up your unraid VM. That's all you need to do. A lot simpler.

 

As for updating the vmtools, there's no need to pull the flash drive for this. Just use wget while unraid is running to download the file to the corresponding directory in /boot/ and install it.

[overbyrn]

Install the VMWare Virtual Disk Dev Kit, mount an older version of the vmdk with VMware-mount.exe, replace bzroot, bzimage and syslinux.cfg with the current version, unmount the vmdk, shutdown the unraid VM and upload the vmdk to the datastore via the vSphere client to replace your old vmdk, right click it and hit inflate, and then boot up your unraid VM. That's all you need to do. A lot simpler.

 

As for updating the vmtools, there's no need to pull the flash drive for this. Just use wget while unraid is running to download the file to the corresponding directory in /boot/ and install it.

 

If you have time mrow, a write up of the steps involved including links to the dev kit, command line args for vmware-mount.exe etc, would probably benefit a ton of people.  Maybe BetaQuasi could include it on the first post or link it to a wiki location?

 

I guess the truth is, if you're running this type of config then the implication is you'd know how to do it, but well you know... 

[Wimpie]

Install the VMWare Virtual Disk Dev Kit, mount an older version of the vmdk with VMware-mount.exe, replace bzroot, bzimage and syslinux.cfg with the current version, unmount the vmdk, shutdown the unraid VM and upload the vmdk to the datastore via the vSphere client to replace your old vmdk, right click it and hit inflate, and then boot up your unraid VM. That's all you need to do. A lot simpler.

 

As for updating the vmtools, there's no need to pull the flash drive for this. Just use wget while unraid is running to download the file to the corresponding directory in /boot/ and install it.

 

If you have time mrow, a write up of the steps involved including links to the dev kit, command line args for vmware-mount.exe etc, would probably benefit a ton of people.  Maybe BetaQuasi could include it on the first post or link it to a wiki location?

 

 

I would also appreciate this. I wrote the write up because this was the way I did it. If there is an easier method, then I would like to learn.

 

But please do it detailed, because I don't even know what this "VMWare Virtual Disk Dev Kit" is, let alone how to install it (so for me, your method is at this moment a much more difficult way).

 

Thanks

[mrow]

1. Download and install the VMWare VDDK (Virtual Disk Development Kit) located here. You will need to provide your email and password you used to get your free ESXi license. https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?productId=285&downloadGroup=VSP510-VDDK-510

 

2. Once installed, from the command prompt, navigate to the path shown in the screen shot and enter the command in the screen shot to mount the older version of the vmdk. I used "J" for the drive letter but you can use any unused drive letter. You want to mount unRAID.vmdk, not unRAID-flat.vmdk which won't mount.

 

 

 

 

3. Replace the bzroot, bzimage and syslinux.cfg files in the drive you just mounted with the latest versions available.

 

 

 

 

4. Unmount the mounted vmdk drive using the following command. Replace "j:" with whatever drive letter you chose.

 

 

 

 

5. Shutdown your unraid VM. Browse your datastore that your unraid VM is stored on and browse to the unraid VM's directory. Upload both the unRAID.vmdk and unRAID-flat.vmdk like in the following screen shot. Choose yes when it asks if you want to replace the file.

 

 

 

 

6. Inflate the unRAID.vmdk like shown in the screen shot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's it. Boot your unraid VM and you should now be running whatever version of unraid you upgraded your vmdk to. I would recommend you browsing to your flash drive once its booted and updating the unraid system files there as well in case you ever need to run unraid on bare metal for whatever reason.

[BobPhoenix]

I just have this in my GO file after emhttp to map the vmdk to a mount point:

mkdir /mnt/boothdd
mount -w -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/boothdd 2>&1

 

I also share it with an smb-extra.conf:

[boothdd]
comment = Public Folder
force user = root
path = /mnt/boothdd
public = yes
writable = yes

Then I just copy across the network to both the flash share and my boothdd share and reboot the unRAID VM - done.  The only time I have to do anything is when I need to run make_bootable.bat again.

 

Edit: fixed smb-extra.conf to allow writing correctly with 5.0rc16c thanks to RockDawg.

[BetaQuasi]

I like that solution Bob, will be setting that up tonight.  Nice and painless!

 

Sent from my GT-N7105T using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

[Wimpie]

mrow and BobPhoenix, thank you both for this writeup

[bakes]

I just have this in my GO file after emhttp to map the vmdk to a mount point:

mkdir /mnt/boothdd
mount -w -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/boothdd 2>&1

 

I also share it with an smb-extra.conf:

[boothdd]
comment = Public Folder
path = /mnt/boothdd
public = yes
writable = yes

Then I just copy across the network to both the flash share and my boothdd share and reboot the unRAID VM - done.  The only time I have to do anything is when I need to run make_bootable.bat again.

 

How do you know what drive to mount?  I tried with /dev/hda1 and the share just shows empty.  When I do /dev/sda1 it seems be the flash drive.