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ESXi 5: Suppressing the local/remote shell warning

Duncan Epping · Jul 21, 2011 ·

On twitter today Duco asked how to disable esxi shell warning (or SSH) for vSphere 5.0. I knew it was possible so I dug it up. This is the warning Duco is referring to for those who are not familiar with it: “SSH for the host has been enabled” or “ESXi shell for the host has been enabled”. I guess the “exclamation” mark on your host kind of leaves a bad taste.

disable esxi shell warning

Now suppressing it is fairly simple. Go to your host, click the configuration tab, click “advanced settings”, go to UserVars” and scroll all the way down to “UserVars.SuppressShellWarning” change the value from 0 to 1. Simple huh!

disable esxi shell warning

Yes I know most of you probably don’t have access yet, but this is one of those little things that will come in handy at some point.

Related

Server 5, 5.0, esxi, vSphere

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Duco Jaspars says

    21 July, 2011 at 12:40

    Great tip Duncan. Works like a charm!

    • Jonathan Medd says

      21 July, 2011 at 12:44

      Thanks for this. Is there an equivalent setting in 4.1, since UserVars.SuppressShellWarning does not seem to be available there?

      • Duncan Epping says

        21 July, 2011 at 12:55

        No this is a new setting. Might be backported to new builds of 4.1.

        • Jonathan Medd says

          21 July, 2011 at 12:57

          Great, thanks for the info 🙂

        • vRico says

          27 December, 2012 at 20:34

          Wish I could find a command that would work for KS file on ESXi 4.1U2

  2. Greg says

    21 July, 2011 at 12:57

    Johnathan http://www.vcritical.com/2011/02/get-rid-of-those-esxi-tech-support-mode-warnings/

    • Jonathan Medd says

      21 July, 2011 at 12:58

      Nice one, thanks 🙂

  3. Duco Jaspars says

    21 July, 2011 at 13:46

    For scripted installs just set

    /adv/UserVars/SuppressShellWarning = “1”

    on the host

  4. Duncan Epping says

    21 July, 2011 at 14:48

    as just tweeted by William Lam:

    esxcli system settings advanced set -o /UserVars/ESXiShellTimeOut -i 1

  5. deobfuscate says

    21 July, 2011 at 16:40

    Awesome, thank you!

  6. Greg says

    22 July, 2011 at 00:45

    I guess it depends too on you SOE. I know some customers who refuse (don’t get me started) to enables SSH/Console/Shell access to the hosts. In the event that someone turns this on then you’d actually want that alert. I personally love the shell. It makes more sense in a lab and the warning annoys me more than anything. So I always turn it off.

  7. Ram says

    31 July, 2011 at 00:20

    How to get rid of configuration issue for these 2 below:

    1. Esx shell for the host has been enabled
    2. SSH for the host has been enabled

    I am running ESXi5. Testing out the product. I did enable Shell and SSH using F2 customize system on the host. My setup is HOME LAB running 2 physical ESXi5 and 2 virtual ESXi5.

    Appreciate your help.

    • Duncan says

      31 July, 2011 at 01:20

      Isn’t thst what the article describes?

      • Ram says

        31 July, 2011 at 04:29

        It does but, I don’t see UserVar – Suppress Shell Warning under configuration / advanced settings. Hence posted the request.

  8. Luca says

    21 November, 2011 at 12:08

    Excellent Tip! for all those setting up vSphere5 Autodeploy with a ks.cfg script (because we don’t all work on systems with Enterprise Plus licenses{re:host profiles}) here is the script entry:
    “esxcli system settings advanced set -o /UserVars/SuppressShellWarning -i 1”

  9. Kyle says

    1 December, 2011 at 18:35

    Duncan, I don’t see a way to save this in Host Profiles. I am using Auto Deploy and Host Profiles, how can I make this “stick”?

    • Duncan says

      1 December, 2011 at 19:15

      It is part of host profiles! Just change it on one of your hosts, create a hp based on that host and check:
      advanced configuration options –> Uservars…

      • Kyle says

        1 December, 2011 at 19:39

        Doh! Guess I missed it, thanks!

  10. Kyle says

    1 December, 2011 at 18:41

    Duncan, I don’t see a way to save this in Host Profiles. I am using Auto Deploy and Host Profiles, how can I make this “stick”?

  11. Ben V says

    6 December, 2011 at 21:22

    Great tip! This help me a lot! I hate than vmware alert me on this service!!

  12. Chris says

    29 March, 2012 at 12:45

    Is it not best to stop the SSH and ESXi Shell services and make them manual than suppressing the alert that tells you there is a potential security breach on your host?

  13. Duncan says

    29 March, 2012 at 14:47

    Indeed it would be…

  14. Thomas Buck says

    18 June, 2012 at 06:47

    Hi.

    Thank you for this useful information. It worked for us in our new vSphere 5 environment.

    Bye
    Thomas

  15. Luca Stüdeli says

    26 June, 2012 at 14:01

    Thank you for explanation. Works great

  16. Craig Thompson says

    31 July, 2013 at 21:04

    PowerCLI:

    get-vmhost | Set-VMHostAdvancedConfiguration -Name UserVars.SuppressShellWarning -Value 1

    Thanks!!!

    • flesz says

      6 February, 2014 at 16:21

      Thank you

  17. Breno Carvalho says

    6 March, 2014 at 20:53

    Niiiice!!!!!

  18. Steve Zio says

    7 April, 2014 at 14:51

    Ok but what if we actually want to get an email alert or have it send a trap when this is turned on. I can’t seem to find that anywhere.

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About the author

Duncan Epping is a Chief Technologist in the Office of CTO of the Cloud Platform BU at VMware. He is a VCDX (# 007), the author of the "vSAN Deep Dive", the “vSphere Clustering Technical Deep Dive” series, and the host of the "Unexplored Territory" podcast.

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