This tutorial explains how to modify a minimal image so that it can be booted from ESXi 7+ or VMWare Workstation

REASON

The minimal cloud image enables the GRUB_FORCE_PARTUUID option which means system boots from root filesystem only, and the well-known vmw_pvscsi module is compiled as a kernel module. Therefore, we need to enable initrd.img to load the vmw_pvscsi driver before mounting the root filesystem.

HOW TO TUTORIAL

We need server and minimal cloud image that can be downloaded from ubuntu offical server.

• Enable module
  • modprobe nbd
• Mount & copy initrd.img-6.8.0-60-generic + vmlinuz-6.8.0-71-generic from ubuntu-24.04-server-cloudimg-amd64.img
  • mkdir -p /mnt/nbd0
  • qemu-nbd -c /dev/nbd0 ubuntu-24.04-server-cloudimg-amd64.img
  • mount /dev/nbd0p16 /mnt/nbd0
  • cp -a /mnt/nbd0/initrd.img-6.8.0-60-generic /mnt/nbd0/vmlinuz-6.8.0-71-generic %1 (%1 is pathname) 👈
  • umount /mnt/nbd0
  • qemu-nbd -d /dev/nbd0
• Connect to another disk image
  • qemu-nbd -c /dev/nbd0 ubuntu-24.04-minimal-cloudimg-amd64.img
• Mount partitions and copy initramfs ralted files (ensure all files permission is 600)
  • mount /dev/nbd0p1 /mnt/nbd0
  • mount /dev/nbd0p16 /mnt/nbd0/boot
  • mount /dev/nbd0p15 /mnt/nbd0/boot/efi
  • mount --bind /dev /mnt/nbd0/dev
  • mount --bind /proc /mnt/nbd0/proc
  • mount --bind /sys /mnt/nbd0/sys
  • cp -a %1 /mnt/nbd0/boot 👈
  • cd /mnt/nbd0/boot 👈
  • ln -s initrd.img-6.8.0-60-generic initrd.img.old 👈
  • ln -s vmlinuz-6.8.0-71-generic vmlinuz.old 👈
  • ln -s initrd.img-6.8.0-60-generic initrd.img 👈
  • ln -s vmlinuz-6.8.0-71-generic vmlinuz 👈
• Comment the line starts with GRUB_FORCE_PARTUUID= in /mnt/nbd0/etc/default/grub.d/40-force-partuuid.cfg 👈
  • rm -f /mnt/nbd0/etc/default/grub.d/40-force-partuuid.cfg (alternative)
• chroot and update GRUB configuration
  • chroot /mnt/nbd0
  • update-grub 👈
  • exit
  • umount -R /mnt/nbd0
  • qemu-img --disconnect /dev/nbd0

CONVERT TO VMWARE'S FORAMT

Also, hardware version 6 is too old, you should convert it after attached to virtual machine

qemu-img convert -f qcow2 -O vmdk -o adapter_type=lsilogic,subformat=monolithicSparse,compat6 ubuntu-24.04-minimal-cloudimg-amd64.img ubuntu-24.04-minimal-cloudimg-amd64.vmdk

LAYOUT

Device         Start     End Sectors  Size Type
/dev/nbd0p1  2099200 7339998 5240799  2.5G Linux filesystem
/dev/nbd0p14    2048   10239    8192    4M BIOS boot
/dev/nbd0p15   10240  227327  217088  106M EFI System
/dev/nbd0p16  227328 2097152 1869825  913M Linux extended boot