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Enable Auto Startup After Power Failure For Apple Mac Mini

02.11.2013 by William Lam // 35 Comments

I recently came across a very useful tidbit after receiving several inquires asking how to configure an Apple Mac Mini to automatically startup after a power failure. This is extremely useful for situations where power is eventually restored and you are not physically around to press the power button. Automatically starting up after a power failure is not a new feature of the Mac Mini and it actually exists on most modern day systems and can be configured using a variety of tools.

The challenge arises when you are running ESXi, how do you go about enabling this functionality in ESXi itself? Well the answer is actually quite simple, you can enable this outside of ESXi. Normally to enable this feature you can either run a setpci command on UNIX/Linux system or configure the energy saver settings in OS X. Several folks from the VMTN community such as zippytiff and twuhabro have already confirmed having success using the latter option when booting OS X off a USB or SD card to modify the energy saving settings.

I finally got a chance to look into this a bit more for myself and with a bit of research, I found several other methods which also works and may potentially be easier.

Note: I have heard that historically the auto startup flag has not persisted in older Apple hardware, but for the new Mac Mini 5,3 and 6,2, they seem to be persisting without any issue from my testing. YMMV depending on your hardware and/or firmware.

Method 1 (Configure in OS X)

If you already have OS X install on your Mac Mini, then you just need open up the System Preferences and enable auto startup under the Energy Saver section. Once that has been enabled, you can then perform your ESXi installation.

If you already have ESXi installed, then you can use either Method 2 or 3.

Method 2 (Configure using bootable Ubuntu on USB)

We can create a bootable Ubuntu image running off of a USB device (minimal footprint) and run the following setpci command to enable auto startup:

setpci -s 0:1f.0 0xa4.b=0

If you are interested in the gory details on the above command, please refer to this great article which breaks it all down for you. After you have created your Ubuntu image using the instructions in the above link, you can boot off of the USB device (Make sure to hold down ALT/OPT key so you can select to boot off of the USB device). Once Ubuntu has booted up, you will right click on the purple icon on the upper left hand corner and type in terminal.

You will then launch the terminal application and type the following to change over to root user.

sudo su -

Finally, you will enter the above setpci command which will enable the auto startup. At this point, you can type reboot and remove the USB device.

Method 3 (Configure using bootable OS X on USB)

Another method is to create a bootable OS X image running off of a USB device and change the power management settings by using the pmset utility. To enable auto startup, run the following command in the terminal:

pmset autorestart 1

You will need the original OS X installer and if you are using either Lion or Mountain Lion, you can use Lion DiskMaker to help you create the bootable USB image (Make sure to hold down ALT/OPT key so you can select to boot off of the USB device). Once the OS X installer boots up, at the top select Utilities and click on the Terminal application.

Go ahead and run the above command to enable auto start and then type reboot and remove the USB device.

The last thing to do of course is to actually test this out on your Mac Mini. Go ahead and let the system boot up and then yank the power cord and then give it a few seconds before plugging it back in. You should see the Mac Mini automatically power back on after you plug the power back in.

References:

  • http://www.beasts.org/support/macminicolo_howto.html
  • http://smackerelofopinion.blogspot.com/2011/09/mac-mini-rebooting-tweaks-setpci-s-01f0.html

 

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // apple, ESXi, mac mini, power management

Configure Apple Mac Mini to Default Boot ESXi

01.02.2013 by William Lam // 13 Comments

If you are running ESXi on an Apple Mac Mini and it is installed on a USB key, you probably have noticed that the Mac Mini tries to boot from disk by default and instead of using the USB device. This means when you reboot your ESXi host each time, you will need to hold down the "ALT/OPTION" key which will present you with a boot menu to select the device you wish to boot from.

This can be quite annoying if you have a headless setup for your Mac Mini and you just want it to automatically boot off of the right device containing your ESXi installation. To fix this, you can configure the default boot device which can be done by first selecting the device you wish to boot off of as shown in the screenshot above. Next, hold down on the "CONTROL" key which will turn the straight arrow into circular arrow icon as shown in the screenshot below.

Now you just need to either hit enter or if you have a mouse, click on the circular arrow icon and this will configure the default boot device the Apple Mac Mini will use going forward. It is that simple! If you want to boot off of another device after configuring the default boot device, you can still do so by holding down "ALT/OPTION" key while the Mac Mini is still booting up.

Credit goes to this site for solution. 

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // apple, boot option, ESXi, ESXi 5.0, ESXi 5.1, mac, mac mini

Running ESXi 5.0 & 5.1 on 2012 Mac Mini 6,2

12.04.2012 by William Lam // 59 Comments

If you recently purchased the new 2012 Apple Mac Mini 6,2 which was just released not too long ago and tried to install either ESXi 5.0 or 5.1, you probably noticed a PSOD (Pink/Purple Screen of Death) during the installation. This is currently a known issue and there is an extensive VMTN thread (9,300+ views) about this problem which also includes a fix through a collaboration between VMTN community user zer010gic and VMware Engineer dariusd. Even though the Apple Mac Mini is not an officially supported hardware platform for running ESXi, it is great to see VMware engineers going out their way and trying to help the VMware community find a solution as well as providing an "unofficial" fix in this case.

I would also like to point out that this issue only applies to the new 2012 Apple Mac Mini, for previous models such as the Apple Mac Mini 5,1 or 5,3 you can install ESXi 5.0 or 5.1 without any issues. For more details, please refer to the instructions in this blog post.

Disclaimer: The Apple Mac Mini is not officially supported by VMware. The only supported platform for ESXi 5.0 for Apple hardware is the Apple XServe 3,1 and for ESXi 5.1 is the Apple Mac Pro, which you can get more details here.

Before jumping into the solution, if you think VMware should support the Apple Mac Mini for running ESXi, please provide feedback to VMware by submitting a Feature Request. The more feedback that VMware receives from customers along with business justifications, the better our product management team can prioritize features that are most important to our customers.

Here are the current problem/solutions when trying to install on the new Mac Mini:

Problem: PSOD during ESXi 5.0 or 5.1 installation.
Solution: Add iovDisableIR=true to the kernel option before attempting installation. When you are asked to reboot, be prepared to enter iovDisableIR=true again (SHIFT+O) which is required to get ESXi to boot after installation. Once the system has booted up, go ahead and run "esxcli system settings kernel set -s iovDisableIR -v true" in the ESXi Shell to persist the kernel setting. This is a "temp" workaround while PSOD is being investigated.

Problem: Unable to install new OSX Server on a VM or power on existing OSX Server VMs.
Solution: There appears to be a significant change in Apple's SMC (System Management Controller) device in the newer models that prevents the Apple SMC VMkernel driver from properly loading. A tempoary fix was provided to zer010gic to create a custom ISO until the fix is integrated into a future release.

Note: There may be other minor/unconfirmed issues listed on the VMTN thread, but for basic ESXi installation/usage + OSX Server VM creation/installation, the above solutions should be sufficent.

Instead of having everyone walk through the process of creating a custom ESXi ISO which includes the two fixes mentioned above as well as the bundling the updated tg3 Broadcom network drivers for network connectivity, zer010gic has generously created and is hosting ESXi 5.1 ISOs for users to download and use. It contains some work that I have been doing with zer010gic to create an ESXi 5.1 ISO that does not require any manual intervention outside of the normal ESXi installation. I recently completed the rest of this work which is based off of the oriignal ISO that zer010gic has shared on the VMTN community (unfortunately I have not been able to get a hold of him to provide him with the necessary bits and I have decided to post a modified ISO).

Here is a step by step instruction for zer010gic ESXi 5.1 ISO

Step 1 - Download zer010gic ESXi-5.1-MacMini-SMC-6-2.iso.

Step 2 - Transfer ISO to either USB key or CD-ROM

Step 3 - Perform ESXi installation as you would, but when you get to the very last step prior to rebooting, be ready for some typing when the host boots back up (this is important else you will get a PSOD)

Step 4 - When ESXi starts to boot up, hit SHIFT+O which will allow you to add additional kernel boot option. Add the following text the bootUUID (remember to add a space first)

iovDisableIR=true

This step is required to ensure your ESXi boots up properly for the first time so you can permanently enable this kernel option using ESXCLI which will then persist this upon sub-sequent reboots.

Step 5 - Login to ESXi Shell (you may need to enable it first) and run the following ESXCLI command:

esxcli system settings kernel set -s iovDisableIR -v true

Once this is set, you no longer have to do this again. If you prefer not to go through these manual steps, please refer to the section below for a modified ESXi 5.1 ISO which automates all this for you.

Here is my modified ESXi 5.1 ISO which does not require any additional user intervention

Step 1 - Download my ESXi-5.1-MacMini-SMC-BOOT-FIX-6-2.iso

Step 2 - Transfer ISO to either USB key or CD-ROM

Step 3 - Go through normal ESXi install and enjoy

Note: For details on how I automated the kernel setting setting, take a look at the very end.

So if you are looking to refresh your home lab, you just may want to consider using the new Apple Mac Minis, especially with small form factor footprint 🙂

Note: A couple of users mentioned it took a bit of time to boot up, specifically when usbarbitrator module is being loaded. I noticed this too and it took quite a bit of time, probably 5-6 minutes. If you do not plan on any USB pass-through from the Mac Mini to your guestOSes, you can actually disable this service which should help speed the bootup. If you wish to disable usbarbitrator, run the following command:

chkconfig usbarbitrator stop

ESXi ISO Customization Details

If you take a look at the steps required to install the ISO provided by zer010gic, most of the heavy work has already been done for you. The only "manual" part that is required from the user is to enter a kernel option during the first boot and then run an ESXCLI command to persist this kernel setting which will prevent Mac Mini from PSODing. Removing these these manual steps is actually harder than it looks because of when you need to actually perform the changes. After much trial and error, I came up with the following script below (it's not the cleanest, but it works).

Basically the script is loaded from custom.tgz and executed before the installation begins and it generates a script stored in /tmp/customboot.sh which will look for the boot.cfg configuration file stored in the primary bootbank. This is where we insert the iovDisableIR=true parameter so the user is not required to do this after the first boot up. The challenge with this is the boot.cfg does not exists until after the installation has completed, so what I ended up doing was insert a command into /usr/lib/vmware/weasel/process_end.py which is part of the weasel installer for ESXi and is the very last script that is called when a user hits reboot. The command points back to the /tmp/customboot.sh which will perform the insert into boot.cfg right before rebooting. To automatically take care of the ESXCLI configuration, I added the ESXCLI command to /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh which will automatically run after all init scripts have executed. Then finally, I need to clean up local.sh since I only need that that run once which is handled by another script that is also created and stored in /etc/init.d/customcleanup which will just clean up local.sh file as well as delete itself. Simple right? 😉

Note: There is probably a more optimal way of doing this, probably using one of the weasel installer scripts and just set the boot.cfg option and then clean up with an init script, but I decided to leverage some of my earlier work for Disabling LUN Duringn ESXi Installation

Here is the script within the custom.tgz file:

#!/bin/ash

sed -i "s/time.sleep(4)/time.sleep(4)\n    util.execCommand('\/tmp\/customboot.sh')/g" /usr/lib/vmware/weasel/process_end

cat > /tmp/customboot.sh << __CUSTOM_BOOT__
#!/bin/ash

for BOOTCFG in \$(find / -iname boot.cfg);
do
        grep "no-auto-partition" \${BOOTCFG} > /dev/null 2>&1
        if [ \$? -eq 0 ];then
                sed -i 's/kernelopt.*/kernelopt=no-auto-partition iovDisableIR=true/g' \${BOOTCFG}
        fi
done
__CUSTOM_BOOT__
chmod +x /tmp/customboot.sh

sed -i 's/exit 0/localcli system settings kernel set -s iovDisableIR -v true\nexit 0/g' /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh

cat > /etc/init.d/customcleanup << __CUSTOM_CLEANUP__
sed -i 's/localcli.*//g' /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh
rm -f /etc/init.d/customcleanup
__CUSTOM_CLEANUP__

chmod +x /etc/init.d/customcleanup

Categories // Apple, ESXi, Home Lab Tags // apple, ESXi 5.0, ESXi 5.1, mac, mac mini, mini, osx, smc, tg3, vSphere 5.0, vSphere 5.1

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Author

William Lam is a Senior Staff Solution Architect working in the VMware Cloud team within the Cloud Infrastructure Business Group (CIBG) at VMware. He focuses on Cloud Native, Automation, Integration and Operation for the VMware Cloud based Software Defined Datacenters (SDDC) across Private, Hybrid and Public Cloud

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