Raspberry Pi 5 16 GB ESXi 2.1 Installer failure

[Dominic Johnson]

Hello, 

I recently got a Raspberry Pi 5 16 GB and wanted to try ESXi Fling on it. I got the latest v0.3 firmware on it and it does boot the installer USB however right after it loads the crypto modules I get the error shown in the attached screenshot. 

I am trying to use the latest "VMware-VMvisor-Installer-8.0U3c-24449057.aarch64"
I have already updated the Pi to the latest firmware and tried a few different UEFI settings but nothing fixes this issue. 

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks! 

[Walter Plassche]

I have the same error and I'm buying one now

[Walter Plassche]

Sorry, this issue was posted multiple times and I sent two different replies to different locations.   The first post was "I'm pretty sure this is because you don't have a USB to ethernet adapter and because the ethernet port on the pi isn't compatible with ESXi", but this is incorrect.

I have a Raspberry Pi CM5, not a 16GB Raspberry Pi, but the commonality is that both models use the new d0 chip.  I am also consistently getting error:  

SError Exception at 0x0000000037BE540C

My UART debug adapter arrived today so I am trying to look through debug logs to see whether I can find anything helpful.

[Cyprien Laplace]

That's a very early issue when VMKernel starts. and I don't have a Pi5 16GB yet to debug the issue.

Have you tried booting a debian ISO with UEFI?

[Dominic Johnson]

It seems like this is a UEFI firmware issue with the new d0 chips on the Pi 16 GB as shown in this conversation where Windows also no longer boots: 
https://github.com/worproject/rpi5-uefi/issues/43

I also found someone with a boot issue with the Pi 16 GB with FreeBSD as well:
https://wiki.freebsd.org/RonaldKlop/Raspberry%20Pi%205%2016GB

Sadly this UEFI repo for the Pi 5 has been archived so not sure if this will ever get fixed. 

[Walter Plassche]

I would say so.   I recompiled the UEFI with DEBUG active and am using UART to try to figure out the problem.   The problem file in the RPI5-UEFI is 

RpiPlatformDxe.efi (this is the file that causes the system to crash).   I'm trying to look through the contents for any clues and will try to set up breakpoints within the file so I can figure out exactly which command it calls that causes the crash.   

[Walter Plassche]

I'm not certain yet whether this is a firmware issue as the the author of the experimental test RPI5 branch of edk2 did not elaborate on his findings.   The GPIO registers were entirely changed and the CM5 would not boot into UEFI properly in 32 bit mode because the GPIO registers were causing an SError in the UEFI load when in debug mode.  I haven't tested booting ESXi yet with the framebuffer in 16 or 24 bit mode (after editing the GPIO related files), it may actually boot now after I've edited three files.   At the moment I'm trying to figure out how to edit the UEFI to see my eMMC as eMMC rather than an SD card (or to ignore the eMMC altogether since I won't use it in ESXi).   I will try to boot ESXi later this afternoon.  I'm wondering whether you have the Lite model or the eMMC model as it would be helpful to have someone else that can assist with testing.   The Lite model may have fewer errors until I can resolve this.  Do you have a JST connector that you can use directly on the CM5 to help with debugging?

[Dave Ainslie]

Has anyone found a solution to this issue?