Keeping your root visorfs clean: point the path to your own binaries stored on a vmfs volume
Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/26
Some interesting commands derived from [WayBack] ESXi/ESX error: No free space left on device (1007638) | VMware KB:
- finding large files:
find / -path "/vmfs" -prune -o -type f -size +50000k -exec ls -lh '{}' \; - finding space on the root file system (which is not listed in
df -h):
stat -f /
This was in the process of trying to keep my local binaries out of [WayBack] VisorFS: A Special-purpose File System for Efficient Handling of System Images – VMware Labs as it is inherently small in size (both total size and number of inodes) as it is a RAM disk based file system.
Based on that, at [WayBack] Trouble shooting – esx.problem.visorfs.ramdisk.full – DefinIT I found this even more useful statement vdf -h | grep "%\|Ramdisk" which shows the exact usage of what’s in this filesystem. Example output on one of my systems:
# vdf -h | grep "%\|Ramdisk" Ramdisk Size Used Available Use% Mounted on root 32M 1M 30M 6% -- etc 28M 184K 27M 0% -- opt 32M 0B 32M 0% -- var 48M 352K 47M 0% -- tmp 256M 4K 255M 0% -- iofilters 32M 0B 32M 0% -- hostdstats 678M 4M 673M 0% --
The easiest is not to store them in the root file system at all, but then you need to alter the default path:
# echo $PATH /bin:/sbin
Since my local binaries are at /vmfs/volumes/Samsung512NVME/local-bin/, I wanted to persist this path change:
export PATH=$PATH:/vmfs/volumes/Samsung512NVME/local-bin/
Basically you can do this with any current directory on your system: export PATH=$PATH:`pwd`
The easiest way to persist that path is to ensure you can shoehorn the effect in a file that gets started during bootup.
The standard – but unsupported – way to do that is shown for instance by:
- [WayBack] Modifying the rc.local or local.sh file in ESX/ESXi to execute commands while booting (2043564) | VMware KB
- [WayBack] how to create a cron job in esxi 5.5 to reclaim… |VMware Communities
- [WayBack] How To – Make a firewall rule persistent in ESXi 5.x This is a quick how – vm-blog.info
- Alternatively, a more convoluted way is in
Final solution
So, edit vi /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh, then shutdown all your VMs and reboot the system to verify the effects. However inserting that export isn’t enough. This is the line you need to add before the exit 0:
sed -i -e 's!PATH=/bin:/sbin!PATH=/bin:/sbin:/vmfs/volumes/Samsung512NVME/local-bin/!' /etc/profile
Related
- [WayBack] ESXi: Aliases definieren › /dev/blog/ID10T
- [Archive.is] Solved: How to keep a .profile in / of ESXi? |VMware Communities
ESXi does not remove that file on boot-up, it simply does not save it. ESXi runs from memory. So if you created some file (i.e.
/.profile) it is only in “memory-disk”, not in disk-image which is loaded again at the next boot-up.Either create custom vib and install it as every other, or use rc.local which is persistent (any changes you make to this file survive boot-up). You can create & save that file somewhere else and use rc.local to copy it to
/, or userc.localwith shell commands to create .profile at every boot-up.Wait a minute, you are using ESXi 6.0, right? I’m not sure if there is
/etc/rc.local, but it used to be in 5.0/5.5……
I edited
/etc/rc.local.d/local.shto copy the file that I keep on one of my datastores. After reboot, it worked fine. (So, yes, this does work in 6.0.) Thanks!…
I’m glad it worked for you. BTW you are right: instead of single file
/etc/rc.local(as in 5.0) there is now the whole sub-dir/etc/rc.local.d/but functionality is the same…
–jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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