EMC Grab (Linux Shell Script), How To Run On ESX 4.0 and 4.1 Host

2012-10-16 Initial Post

The other week I had to run this and didn't find any really good instructions. This is for EMC Grab v1.3.1 from ftp://ftp.emc.com/pub/emcgrab/ESX (as of 2012-10-02). The version for ESXi is a Windows executable, so its easier to run. But for ESX, you need to run it from the service console.

The readme file included with the utility was not very helpful regarding how to upload to ESX and execute the utility. The post at http://www.virtualizetips.com/2010/04/how-to-run-emc-grabs-on-a-vmware-esx-host/ gave me some direction to get started. Here are some additional things I did:

1. For ESX 4.x, I first needed to enable root SSH login (see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/8375637).

2. I extracted the .tar file on my computer (using 7-Zip) and then copied the emcgrab folder to the ESX host using WinSCP.

3.  I changed permissions on all .sh files in the emcgrab folder. Before that, I got the error below when I tried to execute emcgrab.sh, so that’s why I needed to change the permissions.

[root@esx001 emcgrab]# ./emcgrab.sh
-bash: ./emcgrab.sh: Permission denied

4. Here are the commands to logon using Putty/SSH and execute the utility:

login as: root
root@esx001's password: *****
Last login: Tue Oct  2 16:09:58 2012 from 10.1.1.1
[root@esx001 ~]# cd /tmp/emcgrab
[root@esx001 emcgrab]# chmod 777 *.sh
[root@esx001 emcgrab]# ./emcgrab.sh

Note: I'm not a Linux expert, so there might be a simpler way to do all this.

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