VMware Premium Support and a Linux Live CD

Over the last two days, I worked with a VMware Premium Support engineer on an ESX boot problem. I will post the exact error messages separately. We could not reach the Service Console, and the other two boot options did not work either. At one point, he asked whether I had a Linux Live CD. That took me back to old-school troubleshooting: I searched my case and found a BackTrack2 CD from two years ago.

After booting BackTrack, we checked a couple of system settings and logs. The engineer asked me to email esxcfg-boot.log. I was using the DRAC console, so copy and paste would not work. I remembered the tricks we used with IIS and, within a couple of minutes, transferred the original file to one of my tftpd daemons on the network.

Retrieve the log files

1. Download the ISO, burn it and boot from the CD-ROM.
2. Log in with root/toor.
3. I prefer the GUI, so I start KDE with “startx”.
4. Open a console session.
5. Run “ifconfig eth0 up”.
6. Run “dhcpcd eth0”.
7. Check the IP address with “ifconfig eth0”.
8. Run “tftp”.
9. Use “open ip address”.
10. Use “put esxcfg-boot.log” to send that log, or send another file.

For more information and the download, visit http://www.remote-exploit.org/.