Activating the Service Console using a Bootable Rescue Disk

The section covers editing VMware boot configuration installed on the eMMC drive with a CentOS 6.7 rescue disk.

After installing ESXi to eMMC, download CentOS 6.7 in order to boot the recovery environment which allows editing of the boot.cfg as was done on the USB memstick for installation. This will allow ESXi to boot correctly on the RCC-VE.

Download CentOS 6.7, make sure it is not CentOS 7 because the boot procedure is different. The image file CentOS-6.7-x86_64-minimal.iso was used in this example.

Write CentOS 6.7 to a USB memstick with Rufus, dd, or another similar utility.

After flashing CentOS to the USB memstick, plug it in the top USB port of the RCC-VE unit and power-cycle or turn it on.

At the screen with countdown, highlight Rescue installed system and press Tab.

../_images/esxi-rescuecd-1.png

After pressing Tab, press Space and add console=ttyS1,115200n8 to the line so it looks like the following screenshot. Then press Enter:

../_images/esxi-rescuecd-2.png

Wait for the CentOS recovery disk to boot and select an appropriate Language.

../_images/esxi-rescuecd-3.png

On the Rescue Method media selection screen select Hard Drive.

../_images/esxi-rescuecd-4.png

On the Select Partition screen, choose /dev/sda1

../_images/esxi-rescuecd-5.png

After a short wait, under Setup Networking select NO.

../_images/esxi-rescuecd-6.png

Select Continue on the Rescue screen.

../_images/esxi-rescuecd-7.png

Select OK on the warning screen.

../_images/esxi-rescuecd-8.png

Select shell and press Enter.

../_images/esxi-rescuecd-9.png

Once the shell has started, create a temporary mount point for sdb5 where boot.cfg is located. Type the following commands:

mkdir /tmp/mnt2
mount /dev/sdb5 /tmp/mnt2
../_images/esxi-rescuecd-10.png

Continue with the next commands:

cd /tmp/mnt2
ls

The last command will list the contents of mnt2

Now open boot.cfg file with command: vi boot.cfg

../_images/esxi-rescuecd-11.png

Next, add the following text at the end of the kernelopt line, leading with a Space (move the cursor to the end of the line and press a, then Space):

text nofb com2_baud=115200 com2_Port=0x2f8 tty2Port=com2 gdbPort=none logPort=none
../_images/esxi-rescuecd-12.png

Save the file (Press Esc, then type :wq and press Enter).

Reboot the CentOS recovery disk and remove the USB memstick.

ESXi is now installed and ready to use. Login with the vSphere client to connect to ESXi.

../_images/esx-console-working.png

Note

If the system will not boot from the eMMC, ensure that the BIOS has been updated to version 06 or later. With BIOS version 06, during the boot process the boot order can be changed to prefer the eMMC by pressing F12, the option for Payload (e.g. 7), then enter the letter for the eMMC (e.g. i), followed by E to save and exit.