Category Archives: Emulation

Updating Free VMware EXSi

Overview

VMware regularly patch their free ESXi bare metal hypervisor. If you have the free version, then you can do this from the CLI, with the help of the (also free) VMware vSphere Client.

Steps:-

  • Download patch file
  • Shudown VM’s and put the Host into Maintenance mode
  • Enable SSH Server on Host
  • Copy patch file to host
  • Run the patch
  • Reboot

Download Patch File

You need to have a free VMware account to download the patch upgrade file. This is usually a zip.

To update from 6.0.0 to 6.0.0U1, it is called “update-from-esxi6.0-6.0_update01.zip”, and you can go here to grab it:

VMware patch search

When you search, you should be able to find the file and download it. Note that these instructions should also work for future versions.

Shudown VM’s and put the host into Maintenance mode

Simply shutdown your VM’s and right-click on the Host and “Enter Maintenance Mode”

Enable SSH Server on Host

Click on your Host –> Configuration (tab) –>  Software>Security Profile –> Properties…

VMware SSH enable

In the properties, go down to to “SSH”. If it is “Stopped” then click on the service property “Options” (bottom right), and start it up. I just have it set to the default “Start and stop manually”, as I only go in there to patch ESXi, and so start it when I need it. I have found that after a reboot, it is stopped by default.

You should now be able to able to SSH to your host. If you cannot, then go to the Firewall properties (see screenshot above), and make sure that the “SSH Server” checkbox is enabled.

Copy Patch File to Host

Use the vSphere Client to copy the patch file to the host:

ESXi data store

Don’t change directories – just dump into the root of your datastore:

ESXi data store file xfer

Run the Patch

On the CLI run this:

esxcli software vib update -d /vmfs/volumes/<datastore>/<file>.zip

…where <datastore> is the name of your datastore. For me it’s datastore1, so for me it is:

esxcli software vib update -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/update-from-esxi6.0-6.0_update01.zip

It shouldn’t take long.

Reboot

When you’re done just reboot, then take your host out of maintenance mode and start your VMs up.

 

PearPC PowerPC Emulator for x86

I’ve been playing around with PearPC today – it’s really cool. A lot of people on forums have been complaining about how slow it is. I didn’t find it too bad, especially considering it’s emulating an entirely different CPU arch.

I might actually stick with PCs after all. Now I’m looking in earnest to the new 90nm Athlon 64 socket 939 CPUs. I think I’ll upgrade next year to a machine that has good sound, PCI Express 16x and plenty of USB2, Firewire and SATAII.

So yeah PearPC rocks. I was able to get quite a functional OSX install going. There are a few issues though. The main one on Windows is that there is no networking with the host OS (as of 0.3.1). This really sucks. To get software into the hosted OSX I’d have to move the files into an ISO filesystem image, then change the config to mount the ISO with the virtual CDROM, then boot up.

On Linux you can use the tunnel adapter device for networking. I might try PearPC under Linux and see how that goes. Other issues include no sound, and the inability to connect to the physical CDROMS and DVD drives in my system. So it’d be great to get bridged networking, physical optical drive access and sound going. Hopefully these things are coming.