Intro
OK so you went and splashed out on a Dedicated Hosting Pack only to find out you do not like the OS list included. You have IP KVM Access to the Machine and you feel you want to ruin it (OR Fix it). Lets assume you have debian and you want to install ESXi Here is How!
Install Some software
This was done on Debian 5.04. I am assuming that most of the apt-get(s) can turn into some yum install(s) or the like.
Give it an update first
apt-get update apt-get upgrade apt-get install syslinux unzip
Modify memdisk
At the time of writing the syslinux pack did not support fully ISO boot so replace memdisk with this
cd /boot unzip memdisk.zip
Do the rest of the Configuration
Edit you /boot/grub/menu.lst
nano /boot/grub/menu.lst
Add this boot option
title ESXi Installation from ISO root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/memdisk iso raw initrd /boot/esxi.iso
And you are ready to boot and destroy your partition.
NOTE For ESXi you will need more than 2Gbyte of RAM since the requirement is 2GByte + the memory needed by the RAM drive. Alternatively You can boot from another Partition IF you have this luxury.
BOOT ESXi from a different Partition or Disk
cfdisk /dev/sdb
Create a fat32 partition
mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sdb1
Syslinux the disk
syslinux /dev/sdb1
Mount the new partition and copy all the ISO contents in the new partitition
mount /dev/sdb1 /disk2/ mount -o loop /boot/esxi.iso /media cp -R /media/* /disk2
Edit the Grub menu:
nano /boot/grub/menu.lst
title ESXi Installation From Partition root (hd1,0) chainloader +1
Do the final SYSlinux.cfg adjustments
cd /disk2/ mv isolinux.cfg SYSlinux.cfg
Make sure you got something like this in your config
default menu.c32 menu title VMware VMvisor Boot Menu timeout 80 label ESXi Installer menu label ^ESXi Installer kernel mboot.c32 append vmkboot.gz --- vmkernel.gz --- sys.vgz --- cim.vgz --- ienviron.tgz --- image.tgz --- install.tgz label ^Boot from local disk menu label ^Boot from local disk localboot 0x80
There! Off you go! Play with your newly revamped Toy.
