Transfer files to vSphere Client using ISO

I have found myself looking for ways or a more convenient ways to transfer files to my VMs using a vSphere  Client. With VMware Workstation it is much easier, you can just drag and drop the files directly to your VM with an ease(That is unless you connect to a server to access your VM). In this tutorial I will teach you how to transfer your files to your VM using your VMware client.

If you don't know how to create ISO please refer to my other tutorial
> How to create an ISO in CentOS
> Free ISO creator for Windows


Go to your vSphere client and to your VM window,
Then click the CD Icon then go to CD/DVD drive 1 > Connect to ISO image on local disk...

Choose your ISO image from your directory:

For CentOS5.8, it will not automatically be mounted. Instead, you have to go to Computer  then double click the CD-RW/DVD-RAM Drive to mount the image.

Free ISO creator for Windows

CDBurnerXP is a great tool for creating ISO files. I use it to backup some of my Windows file/s.

CDBurnerXP can be downloaded on their website > http://cdburnerxp.se/en/home

Creating ISO in CentOS Linux

To create an ISO on your Linux

Create an ISO of your directory

#mkiso -o <ISOfile.iso> <directory>

To check your ISO image, create a directory isoimage inside your mnt folder

# mkdir /mnt/isoimage

Then mount your isofile.iso on your /mnt/isoimage directory:

# mount -o loop -t iso9660 <isoimage> /mnt/isoimage

To unmount just type:

# umount /mnt/isoimage

Install VMware Tools on CentOS 5.8

I had encountered a problem or a discomfort from using CentOS on my VMware VSphere Client. I have to press Ctrl+Alt everytime I want to get out of my CentOS and I have to click my VM again to get back to its interface.

This tutorial will guide you how to install VMware Tools in your CentOS so you can get back to your VM from time to time and be able to move your cursor, change screen resolution and some other great things VMware tools can help you manage your VMs inside your VSphere or Workstation.

On your VM window go to VM > Guest > Install/Upgrade VMware Tools

This will then mount the VMware Tools image on your CentOS. Right click on VMware Tools then choose "Open in Terminal".

Login as root:

# su -l

 Then go to the VMware Tools directory

# cd /media/VMware\ Tools/

Copy the tar.gz file to your /home/administrator directory

#cp VMwareTools-8.6-0-425873.tar.gz /home/administrator

 Then go to your /home/administrator directory then unzip the tar.gz

# cd /home/administrator; gunzip VMwareTools-8.6-0-425873.tar.gz; tar -xvf VMwareTools-8.6-0-425873.tar
#ls -la

You can now see the vmware-tools-distrib directory, go to this directory and run the vmware-install.pl

# cd vmware-tools-distrib/
# ./vmware-install.pl

Just follow the default settings and restart your VM.

You now have a VMware Tool in your CentOS VM. Enjoy!

Installing CentOS 5.8 (Graphical Mode)

This tutorial shows you how to install CentOS 5.8 to your machine.

You can download CentOS at the centos official download site at http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=15

In this tutorial we'll be using CentOS 5.8 32-bit

Make sure that the boot device is your DVD/CD or where your corresponding  installer would be (e.g. USB thumbdrive)

On the first part, Press [Enter] (This will go through the graphical mode installation)

Select your option if you want to test the integrity of the CD media or Skip: (I usually press "Skip" on this part)

Press Next, Then select your language(mine is "English(English)") then press Next, Choose your keyboard type(mine is U.S. English). Then press Next.

It will prompt you if you want to erase ALL DATA. If you have an existing partition that has another OS(Probably a windows OS or another Linux) Press "No" and if not press "Yes". For this tutorial I assume that it is a clean install, Press "Yes" to make sure we delete all unnecessary files inside our drive. (Make sure if you press "No" that you have an existing drive that you want to initialize and install the OS or else once the installation proceeds to another frame, it can never go back again unless you restart the whole installation all over again.)

Then choose "Remove all partitions on selected drives and create default layout." on the drop-down menu then click Next. If you have a custom layout select "Create Custom Layout.". Then press "Next". (Check the "Review and modify partitioning layout" if you want to check/re-check the partition layout)

Select "The GRUB boot loader will be installed on /dev/sda", then press "Next". If you have another drive where you want to install the GRUB such as /dev/sdb then you can select it from the Device or you can add if you have an existing GRUB loader.

Press "Next" until you reach  the region. Select your region then press "Next". Input your "root" password then press "Next".

Press "Next" or if you have additional packages you want to install you can choose "Customize now". For this tutorial we'll go for the default installation.

Press "Next" to Finish the Initial Installation:

After the initial installation is complete, press the "Reboot" then wait for the system to restart.

To finalize the installation, just accept the default or we can disable the Firewall, set SELinux to Disabled instead of Enforced.

Set the administration user and password. Then click "Finish".

Now you can use your CentOS 5.8! Enjoy!

Installing vim on CentOS 5.8

I usually use vim instead of vi in my Linux machines. Before I didn't had trouble installing it using the yum command, but what if there's no internet?

To install vim on your CentOS 5.8 go to your cd or mount your ISO(If you don't know how to mount ISO on linux, go to my tutorial how to > Mounting ISO on CentOS 5.8 )

Locate the folder CentOS inside your dvd/cd/iso and look for the vim-enhanced and vim-common:

ls -la | grep vim

Then install the vim-common first:

rpm -ivh vim-common-7.0.109-3.el5.3.i386.rpm 

Then install the vim-enhanced:

rpm -ivh vim-enhanced-7.0.109-3.el5.3.i386.rpm 

You can now use vim in your CentOS 5.8 using the vim command.

 vim /home/user/somefile.txt

Mounting ISO in CentOS 5.8

Before I used to have troubles mounting my ISO inside my virtual machines because of limited resources as well as other issues(such as low bandwidth connection from my client to my ESXi server). With this issue, I have come up with an idea that I'll just copy my ISO file to my CentOS so I'll save up money buying DVD/CD or save me the trouble of mounting it in my VMware or in my Virtualbox. Or this is just another for me to have a way to access my ISO file inside my Linux machine.

First of we have to locate where we put our ISO.

# find /root -name Centos*

As soon as we locate the ISO, we'll go to that directory.

# cd /root/Desktop/

 We then create the isoimage directory inside the /mnt directory:

# mkdir /mnt/isoimage

 After creating the isoimage directory, mount the centos ISO in the /mnt/isoimage directory:

# mount -o loop -t iso9660 Centos\ 5.8.iso /mnt/isoimage/

Your ISO has now been mounted in your directory. To view, go to /mnt/isoimage then type ls to see what's inside your isoimage directory.

After you're done just unmount the /mnt/isoimage directory

# umount /mnt/isoimage