Unable to boot from USB thumbdrive running ESXi 5.5

Installing vmware EXSI 5.5 free i came across a problem on my HP XW6600, after the installation finished and the system rebooted. the only message i saw was “Non-System Disk or disk error …”, this error is because of lack of UEFI support on the XW6600, therefore the EXSI 5.x installer needs to be told to use MBR boot instead of UEFI boot..

When booting the installer you get the opportunity to press SHIFT+O to edit the boot options.

Then write at the prompt: formatwithmbr (remember to make a space between the runweasel and formatwithmbr)

Then follow the normal EXSI install and the XW6600 should boot withoput any problems.

Installing VMware tools on Debian Wheezy 7.x

06-01-2018: instead of using the below guide Install Open VM Tools:  https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2073803

Install the tools for building VMware tools on the host:

$ aptitude update
$ aptitude install gcc make
$ aptitude install build-essential
$ aptitude install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Press the Install vmware tools in vSpehere Client for the VM.

Copy the VMware tools to the VM:

$ mount /dev/cdrom /mnt
$ cp /mnt/VMwareTools-8.6.10-913593.tar.gz /opt/
$ cd /opt
$ tar xfzv VMwareTools-8.6.10-913593.tar.gz

Install VMware tools:

$ cd vmware-tools-distrib/
$ perl vmware-install.pl

Next follow the installation instructions on the screen.

Then reboot the virtual machine and check the VMware Tools is running, by checking the status in the virtual machine with the vSphere client.

you can check locally on the VM that the tool is running by doing the following command:

$ service vmware-tools status
  vmtoolsd is running