Installing ESXi with less than 4GB of RAM

I have an old desktop computer here that I would like to use for my ‘home lab’. Its an old dual core with 4GB of RAM. Ok, I know this isn’t much but for some linux virtual machines this is enough.

I used PXE to boot the VMware ISO, went trough the first steps and then I got the error that my host only had 3.89GB of memory and a minimum of 4 was required.

So I started googling to see if it was possible to bypass this check and guess what:

Press alt+1 to go to the console. Use username root without a password to log in and execute these commands:

cp /usr/lib/vmware/weasel/util/update_precheck.py /usr/lib/vmware/weasel/util/update_precheck.py.old
rm /usr/lib/vmware/weasel/util/update_precheck.py*
vi /usr/lib/vmware/weasel/util/update_precheck.py.old

Type “/MEM_MIN” to jump to the rule that calculates the requirement. move over the “4” press “r” ( vi replace command ) and type in “2”. Now press “:wq” to save and exit.

cp /usr/lib/vmware/weasel/util/update_precheck.py.old /usr/lib/vmware/weasel/util/update_precheck.py
ps -C | grep weasel
kill -9 PID_OF_PROCESS

now press alt+2 and install ESXi.

Source

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.