openbot-esxi_skill

Overview

This skill automates zero-touch deployment of Debian 13 virtual machines on VMware ESXi 8. It builds a custom preseed ISO, uploads it to an ESXi datastore, provisions an NVMe + vmxnet3 VM with a serial console, and runs an unattended installation to produce a ready-to-use Debian guest. The workflow emphasizes repeatable, script-driven provisioning for lab and automated environments.

How this skill works

The scripts generate a preseed.cfg with locale, user, and password settings, then patch a Debian netinst ISO and create a custom ISO with xorriso/isolinux. The ISO is uploaded to the ESXi datastore via govc/ssh, a VM is created (NVMe disk, dual NIC, serial port bound to ESXi telnet), and the VM boots to perform an unattended install. Post-install steps remove the installer NIC, eject the ISO, and set the VM to boot from disk; the script prints connection credentials and serial port info.

When to use it

• Deploy multiple Debian 13 VMs quickly with no manual installer interaction.
• Automate lab or CI environments that need consistent VM configuration and packages.
• Provision headless VMs that require serial console access for debugging or recovery.
• Create reproducible images for testing with NVMe disks and vmxnet3 networking.
• Resize VM disks online using the included disk-resize helper.

Best practices

• Run on a lab ESXi host first and review the preseed before production use.
• Pass secrets only via environment variables and capture stdout securely; remove uploaded ISO after deployment.
• Prefer SSH key auth for govc/ESXi where possible instead of sshpass in production.
• Restrict ESXi telnet serial access with firewall rules or network segmentation.
• Customize preseed (locale, packages, users) in the deploy script rather than editing generated ISOs manually.

Example use cases

• Create 10 identical Debian 13 test VMs for CI in under 10 minutes each.
• Deploy a headless appliance VM with serial console reachable via telnet to ESXi.
• Provision a development sandbox with open-vm-tools, qemu-guest-agent and cloud-guest-utils preinstalled.
• Grow a VM's root filesystem online using the provided esxi-vm-resize-disk helper.