Ubuntu Esxi Image

[Jeannine Lander]

Idownloaded the ubuntu image from -images.ubuntu.com/releases/16.04/release/ubuntu-16.04-server-cloudimg-amd64.ova, and deployed it to vmware vsphere. But I do not know the login credentials after the bootup.

Because the apt source stopped to provide nvidia-driver under 470, I download .run file from nvidia website and install manually. To prevent the driver auto upgrade, I stopped autoupgrade function of apt.

helloI met the same question when i use 3080 on ubuntu 20.04.4 ESXi6. 7.U2 . nvidia-driver is 470.57.01. I want to use ubuntu20.04.3 and nvidia-driver6-460. Do you have installation package about ubuntu 20.04.3.iso and nvidia-driver-460 ?could you email to me (qq:1210586191)?

I am in the same position as others in the thread trying to use a 3090 in ESXi 7.0U3c with DirectPath I/O (PCIe passthrough). I confirm that the 470.82 drivers were the last proprietary drivers to work until 515.43.04/kernel-open I also want to reiterate that the properietary kernel driver 515.43/04/kernel still fails with the same errors as discussed in this thread.

$ dmesg grep vmware

[ 0.000000] vmware: TSC freq read from hypervisor : 2992.968 MHz

[ 0.000000] vmware: Host bus clock speed read from hypervisor : 66000000 Hz

[ 0.000000] vmware: using clock offset of 18001067827 ns

[ 5.414545] systemd[1]: Detected virtualization vmware.

Had the same issue, running RTX 3060ti with ubuntu 20.04 on esxi. Hardware is Asus x370 crosshair 3700x. Was working fine, then updated and no longer had a gpu. As of 8/15/22 I tried updating to the latest patch of esxi, was on 7.0 update 1 and installed to update 3 U3f, no change. Tried 22.04 and Manjaro with preconfigured 515.65.01 drivers, no luck. I was able to downgrade to 460.84 in Manjaro and get that to work. I can also confirm opensource driver 515.65.01 does work on Manjaro with kernel 5.4.210-1 using the manual install path from guide -to-install-the-nvidia-drivers-on-manjaro-linux and using -m=kernel-open with the .run download. Then added options nvidia NVreg_OpenRmEnableUnsupportedGpus=1 in /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf

and rebooted and I now have a working nvidia-smi output.

I have been stuck on a netbook since last year due to budget constraints, but finally managed to get a decent laptop from a very generous person. Now my ubuntu installation in the netbook has all my development tools, libraries, personal mediawiki, other servers and things that I'm only reminded when the command line complains. I can always ssh into my netbook, but don't want to carry both the computers all the time. Is it possible to create an image from my netbook Ubuntu and use it out of the box in a Vmware player in the new laptop?

I am a HUGE fan of HashiCorp Packer and I have been using it for a number of years across many different projects including the VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) solution. While it can certainly feel daunting at first, the same can be said for just about anything new, I typically point folks over to Ryan Johnson's fantastic Packer Examples for VMware vSphere project as a starting point, where you can find working Packer examples across a number of popular OS distributions for both Windows and Linux.

Most recently, I was helping out a few colleagues who was interested in automating the build of an Ubuntu Desktop image that could then be exported to an OVF/OVA. Of course, my recommendation was for them take a look at Ryan's project and they should be able to augment the existing Ubuntu Server 22.04 example. Interestingly enough, while I always recommend Ryan's Packer example repo, I have not personally used it myself and this is primarily due to the existing customization I have in my Packer builds which includes the use of custom OVF properties, which you can read more about HERE, HERE AND HERE.

Ryan's project is extremely comprehensive and while things should just work if you use the default builds, but if you wish to make tweaks, I can certainly understand that you could feel overwhelmed, which is exactly how I felt when trying to figure out how to augment the existing Ubuntu Server 22.04 build.

While I do have experience in using Packer, it did take me a few attempts as I ran into some setup issues on my macOS system and just ended up deploying an Ubuntu 22.04 VM to then use as my build host. The required change to go from an Ubuntu Server to Ubuntu Desktop was minimal, you do need to understand the project layout and ultimately how the repo has been setup, which includes the use of Ansible Packer Provisioner, which was not something I had used before.

I wanted to put together this blog post, not only as a reference for myself but also for anyone who wants to start using Packer and Ryan's awesome repo but need a bit more guidance if you intend to perform further customization.

Step 1 - Download and install the latest Ubuntu Server 22.04 ( -22.04.2-live-server-amd64.iso) as a VM. While you can certainly run the Packer build from your desktop system, depending on how it has been setup, you might still run into issues and having a dedicated build host is not necessary a bad thing.

Step 5 - Create a new build configuration, which allows you to isolate each build separately including credentials and build environments. In the example, I have named this jammy_desktop, but you can use any name as it simply creates a directory with the Packer configuration files that you will need to edit.

Step 6 - Depending on when you clone Ryan's repo, you may want to use newer versions of the OS ISO images and that requires you to update the Packer configuration file to include the directory where the ISO image will be stored on your vSphere Datastore but also the filename and SHA256 hash. In my example, I am using the latest Ubuntu Server 22.04.2 image and I have tweaked the filename to match the default value but the directory and the SHA26 hash is a different value. You can use sha256sum utility to generate the required has.

Step 7 - Since we want an Ubuntu Desktop image rather than the default Ubuntu Server, which does not include a graphical desktop, we will need to adjust the cloud-init user-data configuration to include the additional ubuntu-desktop package which will give us the desktop experience.

Note: If you need to make other OS customization, you can certainly apply the changes here or look at using the Ansible Packer Provisioner which is also used within the project. Additional research should be done if you intend to use Ansible rather than native cloud-init interface which Ubuntu supports.

Additionally, we also need to provide a password for the build account including the SHA512 hash of the password. To generate the hash, you can run the following command and then specify the password of your choice and it will output the SHA512 hash

Step 11 - Now we need to edit common.pkrvars.hcl file and specify the vSphere Datastore in which your ISO images will be stored by editing the common_iso_datastore variable. Ryan's repo uses both the Content Library and OVF Providers to allow multiple output of the final image. If you do not have or intend to output the Ubuntu image into an existing vSphere Content Library, then make sure you configure the common_content_library_skip_export variable to true or else you will hit an error at the very end of the build.

Step 12 - The last configuration file you will need to edit is the vsphere.pkrvars.hcl file which contains information about your vSphere environment including vCenter Server, credentials and resources Packer will use. This should be pretty straight forward and if you are using the default self-signed TLS certificate for vCenter Server, make sure you set the vsphere_insecure_connection variable to true.

Step 13 - If you recall from Step 6, we had specified the name of the ISO and the directory it would be found in. You now need to ensure this matches up in your vSphere environment by uploading the Ubuntu ISO image that Packer will use to build your image.

If everything was configured correctly, you should see a new VM that is created by Packer and it will begin the OS installation and then customize the VM and finally export the image as an OVF/VMDK which will be located under the artifacts directory. The build time will vary based on your environment and resources but the screenshot above is what you should see with a successful build. Hopefully this was useful for anyone looking to get started with Packer but might feel a bit overwhelm with making changes to the default Ubuntu build.

I'd recommend posting on the Github repo if you're still stuck. There's also packer debugging that you can enable to see what is going on, but more than likely you've got connectivity issues between where you're running Packer and your ESXi host, make sure they can talk to each other (bi-directionally)

William is Senior Staff Solution Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. He focuses on Cloud Native, Automation, Integration and Operation for both VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) & VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) across Private, Hybrid and Public Cloud

As soon as the custom/ubuntu-raw (or any custom/ubuntu-blah) appears in MAAS, the Deploy page shows the Ubuntu Custom RAW twice, one under OS -> Ubuntu which fails, and another under OS -> Custom which works.

The image custom-ubuntu.tar.gz cannot be deployed to machines on MAAS. This also created more duplicated entries on the Deploy page. The image is available under both Ubuntu (which fails) and Custom (which partially works, I mean, MaaS UI seems to start the Deployment but then it fails in the end - while the RAW works).

In addition to that, bugs that are not present in launchpad might be forgotten - please take a look at -to-review-and-report-bugs on how to report bugs and report them on launchpad (like for your point 3)

If we are missing some docs - or if you have suggestions like in this post - fill a bug with the tag documentation (like for your point 6)!

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