cURL on ESXi 5.0?

Question

How can I get cURL work on a ESXi 5.0 server?

I know that cURL existed on previous versions of ESXi, for some reason there is no cURL in the latest ESXi.

I'm trying to find a way to run a statically compiled curl binary but I'm lost.

I know that a binary compiled statically on CentOS 3.9 would work on ESXi 4.1 and 4.0. But which version of CentOS I should use to do the same for ESXi 5.0?

Please help! Thanks.

As a general rule, SSH'ing into the ESXi host itself ought to be a very very rare thing. You should explain the bigger picture of what you're attempting to here, because it sounds like you're doing something wrong. — ThatGraemeGuy, Mar 22 '12 at 15:40

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 22 '12 at 15:40

I would strongly advise you NOT to do this at all, the whole point of VMWare dropping ESX in favour of an ESXi-only product set was to discourage 'in-host' additions and tinkering. They want us to just build our hosts and leave them alone, something I personally understand, adhere to and encourage.

I don't know what you're actually trying to achieve but I'm sure you could get to that point using supported tools thus leaving your hosts to do what they do unfettled.

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 22 '12 at 15:15

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You shouldn't try to run a binary like that on ESXi. It's not meant for that. Are you trying to download something directly to ESXi? If so, please try using wget. It's built-in.

Usage: wget [-c|--continue] [-s|--spider] [-q|--quiet] [-O|--output-document file]
        [--header 'header: value'] [-Y|--proxy on/off] [-P DIR]
        [-U|--user-agent agent] url

Retrieve files via HTTP or FTP

Options:
        -s      Spider mode - only check file existence
        -c      Continue retrieval of aborted transfer
        -q      Quiet
        -P      Set directory prefix to DIR
        -O      Save to filename ('-' for stdout)
        -U      Adjust 'User-Agent' field
        -Y      Use proxy ('on' or 'off')

answered Mar 22 '12 at 15:15

ewwhite

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Thank you for your answer. I'm aware of wget. However, I need curl's multi thread function. – ispirto Mar 22 '12 at 15:29
That doesn't sound right. What are you trying to do? – ewwhite Mar 22 '12 at 15:42
4

So you want to run mulit-threaded code in ESXi's unsupported CLI? if so they you're NUTS! – Chopper3 Mar 22 '12 at 16:12
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ESXi's wget (part of busybox) doesn't support https. – Bastien Durel Jan 12 '18 at 11:10
@BastienDurel wget on ESXi finally started to support https. Yay! https://serverfault.com/questions/512888/vmware-esxi-help-downloading-large-iso/975328#975328 – Jeroen Wiert Pluimers Jul 15 '19 at 15:15

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 22 '12 at 17:35

0

Your best option is to do this on a guest instead of the host and use the vcli to manipulate the host as required. VSphere isn't really designed to run a full OS in the console VM. Even if you got cURL running I suspect you'll hit other roadblocks.

answered Mar 22 '12 at 17:35

Jim B

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cURL on ESXi 5.0?

3 Answers3

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