UCS EXSi VM first boot hangs (spinning icon)

[justinz]

When I deploy the Univention VMware ESXi VM image ovf file to ESXi 6.0, the initial boot doesn’t get past the spinning wheel. I’ve given this four trys (repeat download VM image from website, deploy into ESXi again, power on…), so it’s repeatable. Perhaps it’s an incompatibility with the older ESXi 6.0(?)

Note that I am able to successfully load Univention’s VMware workstaion image into Workstation Pro 16, finish the setup, then export to ovf hardware type 13, edit to type 11 (for ESXi 6.0) and then deploy to ESXi 6.0.

I’m not sure if I should report the problem here or somewhere else.

[StefanU]

Hi Justin.

Perhaps it’s an incompatibility with the older ESXi 6.0(?)

Unfortunately, I can’t say that either. We do not use VMWare.

The appliance is built by Univention. Someone in the forum may be able to tell you more about this or you may already find an answer there:

Univention Help

Can you start other Univention ESX images correctly?

Are you already working with UCS or do you “only” want to try EGroupware?
If you don’t work with UCS, you are more flexible with a self-installation.

EGroupware is quickly installed in a VM with Debian or you can request a trial in our data centre:

Test EGroupware 30 days free of charge

Stefan

[justinz]

I only want eGroupware; tho I am very impressed with Univention’s server! I haven’t yet tried your Vagrant image – my primary home server is Win10 – I make extensive use of Cygwin/pear/ruby/python, xampp (Friends of Apache)… so I can run your server on a local VM or my ESXi lab. I think the Debian-in-a-VM is a good suggestion.

My need is for [simple] personal use. I would say “simple”, but I would like to sync PIMs (calendar/contacts/tasks/notes) to Android and Thunderbird-Lightning. (If the community edition doesn’t allow ActiveSync server, then I hope it allows client and I use Radicale as the sync-server. Of course, I would absolutely to use applications like the spreadsheet and many others.

@Univention: Yes [I think] I was able to start your Open-Xchange ESXi image, but honestly I may be mistaken that I used the Workstaion VM and imported it.

[StefanU]

I haven’t yet tried your Vagrant image

We do not provide vagrant images or scripts.

local VM or my ESXi lab. I think the Debian-in-a-VM is a good suggestion.

Yes, I think so too.

(If the community edition doesn’t allow ActiveSync server,

The CE supports ActiveSync.

I am very impressed with Univention’s server!

Yes, us too. On the UCS, however, we do NOT offer the CE version. We use the UCS as a substructure for customers who want to have a mail server with them and want to user other services/applications together.

However, for some time now we have also been offering a mail server for later installation:

EGroupware Mail - containerized mail-server for EGroupware

---

I would say just go for it.
Install a Debian server (only with SSH) and then install EGroupware:

EGroupware/egroupware

And maybe still read:

EGroupware 20.1 Release Notes

The 21.1 could in the next few days

Stefan

[justinz]

As alternative to Debian, is there any reason to not use Fedora 34? (As simple as the install seems to be)

I ask because I use RHEL-7 a LOT (and CentOS), and I’d like to keep to the flavor of Red Hat. You provide CentOS/RHEL7 instructions (thanks!), but for home use I’d rather not deal with so many 3rd-party repo’s for updated tools (this home-server will run other misc services besides eGroupware, so a rolling distro would be nice).

[StefanU]

Of course you can use the distribution of your choice. We also provide RPM packages:

EGroupware/egroupware

However, I have never installed it on a Fedora server. For safety’s sake, please also look here:

EGroupware/egroupware

Please tell us if and how it worked.

but for home use I’d rather not deal with so many 3rd-party repo’s for updated tools

Hmmm. EGroupware has only one repo for EGroupware itself.

Everything else is standard (at least with Debian).
Which is often different with RH-based OS. That’s why I hardly ever use CentOS anymore but practically always use Debian.
But that’s my preference…

But please note:
You do yourself a favour if you install EGroupware in a separate VM. Nothing else.

Stefan

[justinz]

Yes yes – of course I don’t mean many repos for eGroupware. What I mean is that CentOS and RHEL 7 are long-term-stable, and the main repo has old MariaDB 1.5 and PHP 5.4 versions. They are years old and I don’t want to have to rely on epel or remi for PHP 7.x/etc… not to mention apache and the rest of the OS.

And Yes I agree with One-Server-One-Purpose ideal – in the '90s I built and maintained large server farms for Boston/New York trading & investment firms. But this is a home office, so this eGroupware server will 2nd as a Linux host doing other tasks, and it’s nice to have Gnome-4 desktop to play with

Thank you Stefan!