I’ve configured the lab’s vSphere instance as a Compute Resource within Foreman and I’m currently able to create and destroy Linux, Windows, and ESXi hosts with ease. Now, I’m looking to ‘deploy and destroy’ Cisco 9800-CL instances using Foreman within a lab environment.
With the 9800 ISO downloaded, I’ve been able to glean that we’re using GRUB2 as the bootloader. Referencing official GRUB2 docs helped me refresh my knowledge of GRUB.CFG. Both instance of GRUG.CFG are identical save for a few ‘efi’ related additions in the EFI version. I want to say I understand the following menu stanza, with exception of the /packages.conf, as there’s no actual directory or file contained on the ISO with this name, though there’s one that closely resembles this named PACKAGES.CON. I have the impression that there’s some special sauce here, particularly when you consider that this isn’t really a regular Linux distro.
At this point, my best assumption is that I should possibly be bootstrapping one of the EFI’s from the ISO instead of generic grub64.efi being used by Foreman.
I believe that once I’ve figured out the /packages.conf bit, simply updating the cd0 device to a TFTP or HTTP location should get me going (which also assumes that these functions are enabled within GRUB).
menuentry ‘C9800-CL Virtual (VGA) Console - 2023-03-14_18.14’ --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
set root=(cd0)
linuxefi /packages.conf rw root=/dev/ram max_loop=64 HARDWARE=virtual VMCONSOLE quiet console=tty0 SR_BOOT=cdrom0:packages.conf
}
D:\BOOT
D:\BOOT.CAT
D:\C9800_C0.PKG
D:\C9800_C1.PKG
D:\EFI
D:\IMAGES
D:\PACKAGES.CON
D:_PKGINFO
D:\BOOT\GRUB
D:\BOOT\GRUB\GRUB.CFG
D:\BOOT\GRUB\GRUBENV
D:\EFI\BOOT
D:\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI
D:\EFI\BOOT\CISCO_SH.EFI
D:\EFI\BOOT\GRUB.CFG
D:\EFI\BOOT\GRUBENV
D:\EFI\BOOT\GRUBX64.EFI
D:\EFI\BOOT\MSFT_SHI.EFI
D:\IMAGES\EFIBOOT.IMG
D:\IMAGES\I386CDBO.IMG