Raspberry Pi 5 16 GB ESXi installer error

[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! 

[gumbo]

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

[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?

[Dave Ainslie]

Did you find a solution?

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Sadly this UEFI repo for the Pi 5 has been archived so not sure if this will ever get fixed. 

[gumbo]

It seems as though there are multiple threads with the same subject line (I replied to another one a week ago).  It would be easier for us all to reply to just one of these threads (I chose a different duplicate thread to reply to).  

[Dave Ainslie]

Could you share the files?

[Philip Anderegg]

Hi, 

I have the exact same issue. I have a Raspberry Pi 5, 8 GB of RAM. I have a TP-link USB to ethernet adapter, an Ultragear monitor (HDMI cable to microHDMI adapter for Pi connection). I put the firmware files onto the SD card, deleted the kernel files and put in the RPI5 UEFI files from the github repo. I also set the framebuffer to 24 (at 32 I get a blank screen). I've used RuFUS to put the vmware ISO onto a SanDisk 32 GB USB3.2 USB stick and if I boot into it, I get the exact same screen as OP. Does anyone know how to fix this issue? I didn't have any problems installing ESXi vmware onto my Raspberry Pi 4, 4 GB of RAM  

[einstein-a-go-go]

Can someone please confirm that the last/latest/archived as of Feb 2025 UEFI v0.3, does not include BOOT from PXE and iSCSI, as with the UEFI for RPi4 ?