It is pretty easy to get VMWare ESX installable working on a GX280. Boot from a CD burned from the ISO, and hit tab at the first prompt.

Add nocheckCPUIDlimit as a boot option. Here is the whole string:

mboot.c32 vmkernel.gz nocheckCPUIDlimit — binmod.tgz — ienviron.tgz — cim.tgz — oem.tgz — license.tgz — install.tgz

Proceed with the install.

When the system reboots, you will get an error message about the CPUID. The boot option needs to be changed again on the installed system.

Boot from a linux livecd (I used Ubuntu 8.04 desktop), and navigate to the “HYPERVISOR1″ partition. Edit boot.txt

Add the boot option there are well:

kernelopt=nocheckCPUIDlimit

Reboot and it should start right up.

Then connect to the server with VMWare Infrastructure Client

Click on the server name, then the Configuration tab, and advanced settings.

Click on VMKernel and uncheck the VMKernel.Boot.checkCPUIDlimt checkbox, and hit OK.

Now you can reboot it in the future without problems.

- Taken from Keystone IT

Tools Used

4GB integral usb stick

Grubinstgui, Grub4dos, memdisk

First I formatted the disk using fat32 file system in windows. Sometimes this option was not available so I also have a fat32convert exe just in case. Next I used the grubinstgui to prepare the usb’s mbr for booting. To find the device id (disk#) simply go to computer management (start-run-compmgmt.msc) then disk management and look for removable device. –>Be sure you select the correct drive as choosing the main hard drive may make it unbootable until fixed!<–

Next I copied grldr and memdisk to the root of the usb, and created a blank text file called menu.lst

The USB is now bootable and all I had to do was find the right configs for the menu.lst file to get the isos to boot off the usb. My menu.lst is as follows:

color white/black black/white
timeout 120
gfxmenu /message

title Command Line
commandline

title Boot from Hard Drive\n
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader (hd0,0)+1

title Hirens Dos BootCD
find –set-root /HBCD/boot.gz
kernel /HBCD/memdisk
initrd /HBCD/boot.gz

title Mini Windows Xp
find –set-root /HBCD/XPLOADER.BIN
chainloader /HBCD/XPLOADER.BIN

title Clonezilla
root  (hd0,0)
kernel /images/clonezilla/live/vmlinuz boot=live union=aufs vga=788 ip=frommedia live-media-path=/images/clonezilla/live bootfrom=/dev/hda toram=filesystem.squashfs
initrd /images/clonezilla/live/initrd.img
boot

title Gparted Live
configfile /gparted_submenu.lst

title Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop
find –set-root /ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso
map /ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso (0xff)
map –hook
root (0xff)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso quiet splash locale=en.UTF-8 –
initrd /casper/initrd.lz
boot

title System Rescue CD 1.5.3
map (hd0,0)/systemrescuecd-x86-1.5.3.iso (hd32)
map –hook
chainloader (hd32)
boot

title Ultimate Boot CD 4.11
map (hd0,0)/ubcd411.iso (hd32)
map –hook
chainloader (hd32)
boot

title Restart The Computer
reboot

Menu.lst

title Main-menu
configfile /menu.lst

title GParted Live 0.4.5-2
kernel /live/vmlinuz boot=live union=aufs noswap noprompt vga=791 ip=frommedia nolocales root=
initrd /live/initrd.img

title GParted Live(RAMFS, media can be removed)
kernel /live/vmlinuz boot=live union=aufs noswap noprompt vga=791 toram ip=frommedia nolocales
initrd /live/initrd.img

title GParted Live(Safe graphic settings, vga=normal)
kernel /live/vmlinuz boot=live union=aufs noswap noprompt ip=frommedia nolocales vga=normal
initrd /live/initrd.img

title GParted Live (Failsafe mode)
kernel /live/vmlinuz boot=live union=aufs noswap noprompt acpi=off irqpoll noapic noapm nodma nomce nolapic nosmp ip=frommedia nolocales vga=normal
initrd /live/initrd.img

gparted_submenu.lst

Only clonezilla and hirens boot cd had to be extracted (so far) in order to get them working. My bootable usb also included a higher res splash screen using gfxmenu. All I did with the archive was extract it, run the unpack command and replace the background (gfxmenu\files\back.jpeg) with a different one. Then I ran the repack command, copied message (gfxmenu\message) to the usb root and added the following code to menu.lst before anything else is loaded.

gfxmenu /message

References

http://www.userbytes.com/roll-your-own-multiboot-usb-flash-drive/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/grub4dos/

http://diddy.boot-land.net/grub4dos/Grub4dos.htm

A shiny new blog about what I do at work during my 1 year IT Apprenticeship. To start, here is a picture of my workstation.