Remote Shell Access in ESXi
June 30, 2008 · Print This Article
If you’ve used VMware ESX in the past, you’ll know that one of the most useful administrative features is the Red Hat based console used to interact with the ESX host. With the introduction of VMware’s console-less hypervisor ESXi, many of us were left trying to find ways to accomplish familiar tasks in a shell-less environment.
Fortunately word has gotten out that contrary to VMware marketing, ESXi does include a limited shell which can be accessed in times of need. This shell is actually the open-source BusyBox, which includes among other tools an ssh client/server. To access this shell and enable remote ssh logins, follow the steps below. Note: This assumes you have physical (or console based) access to the ESXi host.
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1) After booting into ESXi, go to the console screen of the host and press the buttons ALT-F1 which will take you another console terminal screen.
2) Type the word “unsupported” and hit enter at this screen. Note: character echoing is turned off so you will not see what you are typing.
3) A prompt will appear explaining you are entering “Tech Support Mode”, please read it carefully and understand what you are agreeing to. Enter the root password and hit enter.
4) To enable sshd, type “vi /etc/inted.conf”
5) Find the line that begins with ssh and delete the “#” at the beginning. (I assume you know vi editor commands)
6) Save the file and find the inted service by typing “ps | grep inetd”.
7) Kill the inetd process by typing “kill -9 process id from step 6
8) The inetd process will now restart and the sshd service will be enabled. You can now use an ssh client to access the ESXi host as root.
excellent info, I’ve been playing around with vspher client as it shows connection failure while trying to access esxi and shell access is a good thing while I find a way for vspher client to work, this issue is really estrange because I’m able to access the web interface and I can ping the esxi host but can’t use the client to access it.