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ESX Server 2.5.x No Longer Supports Manual Creation of a Network Installation Floppy

Details

I created a manual installation floppy from the installation CD, and it doesn't work. Why not?

Solution

In ESX Server releases prior to 2.5, it was possible to create a manual network installation by copying from the installation CD-ROM to a floppy using this procedure:

  1. Copy bootnet.img from the installation CD to a floppy.
    For example:
    dd if=bootnet.img of=/dev/fd0H1440 bs=1440k count=1
  2. Boot ESX Server from the floppy.

In ESX Server 2.5.x this procedure no longer works. The ESX Server installation does not progress to a point where it requests the network installation options (NFS, HTTP, and FTP). A message explains that the installation is not able to get ks.cfg, and the installation process aborts.

The network boot floppy images—bootnet.img, intelnet.img, bcomnet.img, and 3comnet.img—are used for scripted installation only. Manual installation in this manner is no longer supported. Please follow the standard installation procedure.

Keywords

1818; bootnet.img; floppy; network; install; ks.cfg; dd

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