Realtek NIC on VMware ESXi

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                                                VMware ESXi 4.0 doesn’t support Realtek RTL8111/8168 network cards by default. When you try to install ESXi on a computer with a Realtek NIC it will say the network card is not supported and will not allow you to proceed with the installation. Luckily you can modify the ESXi ISO to include the Realtek driver so that you’ll be able to install it without a problem. A forum post describes how to do this. I’m echoing the steps below.

• Create a folder and copy your VMware ESXi ISO file
• Download RTL8111_8168_P55_integr_SATA_Ctrl.(AHCI).oem.tgz and copy it to the folder you just created
• Download mkesxiaio_3.9.sh and inetd.conf from here and copy it to the same folder.
• Run sudo ./mkesxiaio_3.9.sh
• Burn the modified ISO
  

(Note: All 3 files are packed as 1.rar attached)
Realtek network cards are not exactly esoteric hardware. Not sure why the default installation doesn’t have support for this. If you’re trying to install ESXi better check the HCL.

                                                                                       
                                                                                        This entry was posted in virtualization, vmware esxi. Bookmark the permalink.                                                                                       

http://engwar.com/post/392

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• Alex says:               
                                  July 24, 2010 at 5:10 am               
                  Hello, this script is great and I got my ESXi working. The problem is that now my NIC drops very frequently so I have to restart the server. I have a realtek 8168 nic.
  Alex
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 Chintana says:               
                                  August 11, 2010 at 5:13 pm               
                  Alex, I’m sorry I haven’t encountered a similar issue. My setup works fine. I think you’ll get better support in ESXi forums.
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 Rob says:               
                                  October 13, 2010 at 7:12 pm               
                  Hello Chintana,
  Amazing work.  Can’t thank you enough, though am having the same issue as Alex.  Though I did upgrade ESXi from 4 to 4.1.  I second machine is on the way. should have in two weeks for more testing including going back to 4.0 to see if it is product of upgrading or something else.  The interestng thing is if I unplug an replug in the NIC cable it starts working again.
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 Chintana says:               
                                  October 13, 2010 at 8:04 pm               
                  Rob, you’re welcome. You should be thanking the original author though   This is a weird problem. The setup I’m having works without any problem for weeks.
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 varazir says:               
                                  October 31, 2010 at 11:47 am               
                  Thanks for using my script    the version is now 4.1
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 Kevin says:               
                                  November 18, 2010 at 7:37 am               
                  Just to let you know that this script doesn’t work with VmWare Esxi 4.10 because some files have changed in this version and the script couldn’t find it.
  esxi_green “Untar install.tgz to $ipath/${esx_folders[1]}”
                          ${esx_pkg_install[6]} -xzf $ipath/${esx_folders[5]}/install.tgz -C $ipath/${esx_folders[1]}
  should be something like
  esxi_green “Untar install.tgz to $ipath/${esx_folders[1]}”
                          ${esx_pkg_install[6]} -xjf $ipath/${esx_folders[5]}/imagedd.bz2 -C $ipath/${esx_folders[1]}
  But I am not a programmer and I just wanted to let you know about this issue.
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 Evan says:               
                                  November 24, 2010 at 2:36 am               
                  For all of thoes who are trying to get this driver working with VMWare ESXi 4.1:
  Follow the above instructions but download this file instead of the link provided
  wget http://mkesxiaio.googlecode.com/files/mkesxiaio_4.1.sh
  You can use the same config files.
  Ours is working with a Phenom II X6 and a gigabyte motherboard.
  Good Luck!
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 mururoa says:               
                                  November 25, 2010 at 3:17 pm               
                  Thanks a lot for this howto.
  Just finished the iso, not tried yet.
  At first I tried it on debian all all seemed to work ok up to the message : you can find the iso … but there was no iso on the save directory. Then I tried on RH5 and I was able to get the iso there.
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 Varazir says:               
                                  November 26, 2010 at 11:23 pm               
                  As I update my script I would suggest using the link http://code.google.com/p/mkesxiaio/ and then finding the latest version there
  You can olso read about a who-to for my script on http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=4
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 Andor says:               
                                  December 6, 2010 at 6:12 pm               
                  Thanks for the *.oem.tgz file. I used it after the default esxi 4.1 install
  renaming it to oem.tgz and copying it to the /bootbank directory.
  My rtl8168 cards is working fine with this driver. The script above
  makes a usable great install set as well. Unfortunatelly I have some
  rtl8169 NICs with PCI bus but I haven’t yet found any driver for them.
  I am not really a programmer. No chance to compile a driver for myself.
  Can somebody send me a link I can download an r8169.o file from.
  There are a number of URL containing driver for Realtek 8169 card
  but unfortunatelly none of them are working with esxi 4.1. Thanks.
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 Andor says:               
                                  December 8, 2010 at 3:00 pm               
                  Finaly I found the mymod-network.new2.tgz file containing the rtl8169 driver. It works but loading it with simple.map the rtl8168 gets the rtl8169 driver and failes however I exactly set it to load the r8168.o file. My mobo is MS-7514 with integrated rtl8168. The D-Link DGE-528T card gets the rtl8169 driver as well and it seems to be working. It might use Realtek chipset.
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 Yuri says:               
                                  December 16, 2010 at 3:27 pm               
                  Thanks a lot for this article! Got ESXi 4.1 installed and running with RTL8168.
  
                 
  
  
  

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• Eugene says:               
                                  December 24, 2010 at 10:14 am               
                  RTL8111_8168_P55_integr_SATA_Ctrl.(AHCI).oem.tgz
  Cay you please tell me where can I download this file, I’m not able to download it from your web page and I was not able to find it anywhere else on the WEB.
  I could use it to help me to install the ESXi 4.1 on my system.
  Please help if you can .
  Thank You
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 Francisco CS says:               
                                  December 31, 2010 at 9:32 pm               
                  Anyone know if this script works with VMware VSphere 4.1?
  Alguem sabe se este script funciona com o VMWare VSphere 4.1?
  Obrigado.
  Thank You.
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 ESXi Learner says:               
                                  January 21, 2011 at 6:06 pm               
                  Hi,
  Feeling despressed after i had purchase a DGE-582T, i found this forum.  Hoping there would be still some slight luck.
  Could someone please kindly advice these concerns?
  I copied all the files into a folder in Windows XP.  How do i do the “d.Run sudo ./mkesxiaio_3.9.sh”?  Will this work with vSphere?
  Thanks in Advance!!
  ESXiLearner
  
                 
         
  
•                 Pingback: ESXi 4.1 auf Celsius M470-2 | ThinkPixel
  
•                                                                                 Aaron C says:               
                                  February 2, 2011 at 10:56 am               
                  Just wanted to say thanks so much for helping me get my Gigabyte motherboard working with ESXi 4.1!! I was having issues creating a custom ISO in Fedora, so I just got a copy of VMware Player and Ubuntu and created it in there, burned it, then it installed without a hitch! I had been pretty discouraged and was using Hyper-V before I realized how few OS’ it supported (no FreeBSD, no desktop Linux of any kind really)… Thanks again!
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 Michel Vallee says:               
                                  February 4, 2011 at 4:37 am               
                  NIC drops very frequently…
  I’d rather buy an Intel PRO/1000 Gigabit Desktop Ct.
  - VMware ESXi 4.1
  - ASUS M4A785T-M/CSM (Realtek ® 8112L Gigabit LAN on board)
  - AMD Athlon X4 Quad Core Processor 640 3.0GHz 2MB L2 Cache AM3
  - 8GB OCZ Gold DDR3 2X4GB OCZ3G1333LV8GK DDR3-1333 PC3-10666 CL 9-9-9-20 1.65V Dual Channel Memory Kit
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 Molly says:               
                                  February 6, 2011 at 11:06 am               
                  I get the following error:
  Do you like to edit /root/esx-oem/etc/proftpd.conf ?  [y/N]
  bunzip2 imagedd.bz2         [Done]
  Mounting imagedd to /root/esx-5./mkesxiaio_4.1.sh: line 1388: 512*: syntax error: operand expected (error token is “*”)
  Removing working folders (esx-*)        [Done]
  And i’m left with empty custom-esx/ and save/ directories
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 Edgard Febrero says:               
                                  February 15, 2011 at 11:41 am               
                  Hi I need your help I want to create an installation of ESXi usb driver with the following, including, Realtek 8139, Realtek 8169, realtk 8168, Realtek 8111, Realtek 8110, if necessary paying please tell us how my email is edgard.febrero1@gmail.com
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 4nubis says:               
                                  March 8, 2011 at 7:56 pm               
                  Getting a pinkscreen when using the adapted ISO
  got the following specs :
  mainboard : GA-MA790FXT-UD5P
  NIC (onboard) : Realtek 8111C/DL chip (10/100/1000 Mbit)
  Sata Raid : AMD SB750 – 6 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors supporting up to 6 SATA 3Gb/s devices, with support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID5, RAID 10 and JBOD
  When deploying a normal ESX(i) 4.1, I get the message that no supported NICs are found.
  Think I’ll go for an intel NIC, rendering my 2 onboard NICs obsolete :’(
  
                 
         
  
•                 Pingback: VMware ESX is awesome, but not so friendly at Shyu, Reminisces and Life in Shanghai
  
•                                                                                 mark h says:               
                                  March 18, 2011 at 1:36 am               
                  Thanks so much for this guide.  Not done yet, but past the early crash stage on a hp slimline Pavillion s5670t.
  Wanted to share something I learned, I was having exactly the same symptom described as Molly above.
  Very simple fix – at the two locations where fdisk is called (lines 1377 & 1383), change the options from ‘-ul’ to ‘-lu’.  That simple.  I actually omitted u altogether and was still fine.
  This was done on fedora 14,  2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686
  Cheers
  -=M
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 José Unanue says:               
                                  March 25, 2011 at 5:57 pm               
                  how to do this installation for ESX 4.0
  
                 
         
  
•                                                                                 OHMEC says:               
                                  March 27, 2011 at 8:02 pm               
                  Hi,
  i´m a windows user and will install VMWare for my server.
  I find this and i was happy, but i had any problems.
  At first i install ubuntu10.10 on my notebook by booting form usb an direct installation on hdd.
  The following steps i make:
  installing:
     … all already installed
  - creating folder …  –   Done
  Which version:
     3 – 4.1
     1 – ISO installation
  Unrar …
  Mounting …
  Copy CD to …
  U mounting …
  Dou you like to install …. – y for all
     creating …
     downloading …
  Do you like to edit … – N
  bunzip2 imagedd.bz2
  Do you like to add custom file from custom-esx – N
  Do you like to edit …inet.conf – N
  Du you like to edit …pci.ids – N
  Du you like to edit …simple.map – N
  Rebuilding /home…
  Copy exx-build /oem.tgz
  U mounting …
  Bzip2 the imagedd
  Replacing imagedd.bz2 with …
  Creating …oem.iso
  you can find …oem.iso
  removing working folder
  Installing:
     … all already installed
  Creating folder exx-cd / …
  For which version …
     3 – 4.1
  Downloading …inted.conf
  Adding customized file …
  Using …
     1 – ISO Installation
  and than i get red text and the window close so quick, that i couldn´t read.
  I burn the image from the folder save with brasero. I get the massage, that the iso is not found, when i install vmware form cd on my server.
  What ist here wrong?
  Many thanks for your helpfull answers.
  
                 
         
  
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