Oct 16 2008

Enabling SSH on ESXi

Published by Brian at 5:03 am under Computers, Geeky, Linux, vmware

So, I finally had a chance to play with VMware ESXi.   It’s pretty much what I expected, a straight-up version of ESX.  Very, very nice… I’ll start moving more servers over from VMware Server 1.x and report back on my progress.

One of the things that annoyed me out of the gate is the lack of SSH support.   It’s there in the underlying operating system, just not enabled.   Here’s how to turn it on:

  1. Get on the console of the ESXi server.
  2. Press ALT-F1 to get to the OS system console
  3. Type “unsupported”
  4. Enter the root password at the password prompt.
  5. Edit /etc/inetd.conf with vi, and uncomment the SSH line
  6. Run:  kill -1 $(cat /var/run/inetd.pid)

And viola!  SSH to your ESX box.   Enjoy!

2 Responses to “Enabling SSH on ESXi”

  1. # Art Vandelayon 17 Oct 2008 at 9:42 am

    Are you kidding me? SSH is configured to run out of inetd on ESXi? Tell me, Brian, do you know of any advantages to this method. It also seems a little odd that it is inetd and not xinetd. Please renew my faith in VMware.

  2. # Brianon 17 Oct 2008 at 9:47 am

    Well it *is* the Internet Daemon Super Server.

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