topic Cannot use physical serial port on the host in Operating System - VMware

Cannot use physical serial port on the host

Mario N. — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 14:41:43 GMT

A customer implemented VMware ESXi 3.5 on an ML350 G6 server.
When they try to add a serial port to any guest VM the option to "use physical serial port on the host" is greyed and unavailable.
Should they configure anything on either the ESXi server or the server BIOS?
Regards
Mario

Re: Cannot use physical serial port on the host

Ali — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:31:08 GMT

HI Mario,

The serial port cannot be used for both a VMware and the iLO CLI. disable the iLO CLI by performing one of the following:

Disable the iLO CLI Using the iLO ROM-Based Setup Utility (RBSU)

1.Power the server ON.
2.When prompted, Press the F8 key to access the iLO RBSU.
3.Navigate to Settings -> CLI and press ENTER.
4.Use the keyboard space bar to toggle the "Serial CLI Status" field to "DISABLED."
5.Press F10 to save the setting.
6.Exit the iLO RBSU.

If above steps do not help,
Power drain the server
clear the NVRAM from h/w switch.
Update the system bios and then try.

HOpe this helps,

PS don't forget to assign points if this is helpful :)

cheers,
Aftab

Re: Cannot use physical serial port on the host

Jags_21 — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 13:57:08 GMT

Hi Mario,

The ESXi version (ESXi 3.5) which is installed by the customer does not support the physical serial and parallel ports. ESX does support physical serial and parallel ports

In order to get the complete support you need to upgrade the ESXi box to ESXi 4.1

or alternative..

use a virtual serial or parallel port as a named pipe or an output file

Regards,
Jagadish