Copied extras.tgz to the same directory as the boot.cfg on our PXE server (or you could do same on a CD)Ħ. Put it into a directory called /somedir/etcĥ. Got a copy of /etc/inittab and commented out that line for techsupport.shĢ.
I wasn't able to create a new TTY but what I was able to do is modify /etc/inittab so it didn't start the termsupport.sh on /dev/tty1.
I was trying to PXE install ESXi (v5.0 in my case) via kickstart and I wanted to have the user presented with some initial questions on an unused virtual console using the 'dialog' command to provide text based menus. I'm not sure if it helps, but I was in the same situation. I write out all the hosts/ip addresses/netmasks/gateways/vlans to a CSV file to the PXEboot / deployment server, then PXEboot the new server and choose which ESXi server from the menu and from there it's a hands-off automated install with postinstall config and network setupĪlternatively, if I could shut down the Tech Support Mode while ESXi is booting up then I could use that TTY The reason why I would like to present a menu to choose the ESXi server identity is because that is how my deployment system works Install nfs -server=10.0.0.x -dir=/pxeboot/media/esxi41u0Īutopart -firstdisk=local -overwritevmfs You can test this yourself with the following kickstart script
We're talking about ESXi here with a text-only screen.īoth TTY1 (alt-F1) and TTY2 (alt-F2) are interactive screens already, so popping up a menu system which responds to keystrokes on top of another interactive screen will cause the keystrokes to be sent to the wrong screen randomly