VMware Labs' latest fling: VIB Author and how it compares to the ESXi5 Community Packaging Tools

The VMware Labs have published a new tool called VIB Author that "allows ESXi administrator to create custom VIBs at the CommunitySupported level". When I read this news my first thought was: Hey, that's exactly what my ESXi5 Community Packaging Tools (ESXi5-CPT, consisting of tgz2vib and vib2zip) are supposed to do! So, how do these two compare?
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[Release] ESXi5 Community Packaging Tools v1.0

I just released the first version of my ESXi5 Community Packaging Tools. These are two scripts:

• tgz2vib5.cmd (to convert a TGZ file to a VIB file, formerly included with ESXi-Customizer)
• vib2zip.cmd (to combine one or more VIB files into an Offline Bundle ZIP)

These scripts can be used by Community developers (who provide e.g. drivers for unsupported Whitebox hardware) to package their software into VMware proprietary formats.

Go, read anything you want to know about these tools (and the different formats that they handle), and download them on the project page.

ESXi-Customizer 2.6 and Tgz2Vib5 1.0

I just published the new version 2.6 of my ESXi-Customizer script.

What's new:

• With this version you are able to optionally create an (U)EFI-bootable ISO file for the installation of ESXi 5.0. (U)EFI stands for (Universal) Extensible Firmware Interface. This is going to replace the current BIOS firmware interface on modern PCs. Please note that the original VMware ESXi 5.0 ISO is already UEFI-capable, the new version of my script is just able to keep this possibility in the customized ISO.
• The new version includes an additional utility script called Tgz2Vib5. With this script you are able to convert an OEM.tgz-style driver package (for ESXi 5.0 only!) into a VIB file. That is the "official" VMware format for software packages - read more about it in this earlier post!

I'd like to encourage the developers of community supported ESXi 5.0 drivers to convert their packages into VIB format (using Tgz2Vib5) before publishing them! The VIB format has several advantages over the traditional OEM.tgz format:

• You can add descriptive meta data (like vendor/author name, version and detailed description) to the driver package
• Unlike an OEM.tgz file a VIB file can be easily installed into an already running ESXi 5.0 system by running the following commands inside a local or remote ESXi shell:
    esxcli software acceptance set --level=CommunitySupported
    esxcli software vib install -v VIB-URL
  (The host must not run any VMs at install time, because it needs to be rebooted after the installation.)
• A VIB file can also be updated with a newer version without having to re-install the whole system. This can be achieved by running the following command inside a local or remote ESXi shell:
    esxcli software vib update -v VIB_URL

VIB files, Offline-Bundles and ESXi-Customizer 2.5

The current version 2.0 of my ESXi-Customizer script is able to add OEM.tgz-style driver packages to ESXi 4.1 and ESXi 5.0 installation ISOs. Tgz (short for tar.gz) is the format that is used to distribute all community-developed drivers for ESXi 4.1 (and prior versions). So these can currently be added to ESXi 4.1 with my script.

However, for ESXi 5.0 you cannot use the driver packages for ESXi 4.1, they need to be re-engineered and re-compiled starting with the stock Linux driver code that is the basis for ESXi drivers. It looks like - so far - nobody in the user community has figured out how to compile drivers for ESXi 5.0. I hope that this will change in the near future, but for now the current version of the ESXi-Customizer script is pretty much useless for ESXi 5.0 ...

On the other hand, there are new and updated driver packages for ESXi 5.0 already available directly from VMware or 3rd party hardware vendors. These drivers are distributed in VIB format and as so-called Offline-Bundles (in zip-format). I wondered if my script could also support these "official" VMware package format and had a closer look at the format of these files.

(Note: To fully understand the following, it is helpful to read my Anatomy post about the structure of the ESXi 5.0 ISO first!)

What is a VIB file?
VIB stands for "VMware Installation Bundle". If you just open a vib-file in a text editor you will see that it starts with the (somewhat well known) header "!<arch>". This means that the file is in the Unix ar format. Wikipedia has a detailed description of this file format, and there you can learn that VIB files use the common ar format, and that you can use the Unix ar command to handle this kind of archive files.
Fortunately, 7-zip - the Swiss army knife of packaging tools - is also able to handle ar-files, and it is also available for Windows. Since I already use it with ESXi-Customizer to unpack ISO-files I was delighted to realize that it is also able to unpack a vib-file ...

So, what's in the VIB file? Exactly three files:

1. A file named "descriptor.xml": The name says it all. This file describes the contents and dependencies of the driver package. Later you will find that again in the IMGDB.TGZ file. For more details see section 4 of my anatomy-post. There you will find the descriptor.xml file of the e1000-driver as an example.
2. A file named "sig.pkcs7": VMware certified drivers need to be electronically signed, and this file includes the uuenconded PKCS7 signature.
3. The payload file: You will find the exact name of this file in the name-attribute of the <payload> tag in the descriptor.xml file. It does not have any file extension.

By design a VIB file can contain multiple payload files. However, each VIB file I looked at contained only exactly one. The payload file's type was always VGZ (short for vmtar.gz), but TGZ-format should also be possible. In fact the payload file is just the archive that makes up the actual driver package. Section 3 of my anatomy post describes that in more detail.

What is an Offline-Bundle?
Offline-Bundles come in ZIP-format and are just a collection of one or multiple VIB files. An Offline Bundle contains additional meta data in an included archive named metadata.zip, the VIB-file(s) are stored in the archive's sub directory vib20\.

Is every ZIP-file an Offline-Bundle?
At the VMware site you can download new and updated drivers for ESXi 5.0 from the Drivers & Tools / Driver CDs section of the vSphere 5 download page. These downloads are also in ZIP-format. However, if you look at the contents of such a downloaded file you will notice that it is not an Offline-Bundle itself, but includes another ZIP-file that actually is the Offline-Bundle!

So, please be careful... The real Offline-Bundle-ZIP files have the string offline_bundle or just bundle in their names (e.g. LSI_5_34-offline_bundle-455140.zip). If you are unsure then look into the zip file and check if it includes a metadata.zip file and a vib20\ sub-directory.

ESXi-Customizer 2.5
... will be out soon, and it will support adding VIB files and Offline-Bundles to an ESXi 5.0 media! Watch this space for the announcement.