Took some time, but at last I now received the K7 (2x) for an extra $128 in total.
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May 08, 2024 6:51 am
Aug 17, 2025 6:42 am
I know this has been a while since this thread has had any activity. However I'm gonna try my luck.
I have recently purchased the GKMTec M5 Plus - that also showed me "no network adapter" when installing ESXi - I happend to find linux drivers for the realtek network adapter on GMKTec support page (not directly but was given a link) - Now I just need to find out how to implement them - either by building a custom ESXi installation image - or installing them after setup - I'm new to ESXi so if anyone have any idea on how to - or need the drivers - let me know 🙂
Aug 17, 2025 8:38 am
@whitetigerdk Glad to have you on the forums! The unfortunate bit is this, VMware dropped support for consumer-grade Realtek NICs some time ago. They aren't part of the HCL any longer. The Linux drivers you found on GMKTec's support site would be for Linux. ESXi is actually based on a customized Linux-like kernel but it uses its own VMware-compiled driver modules. With that, you can't just drop in the Linux driver files and have these work inside VMware.
To save yourself the time and effort to try to make these drivers work, I would just recommend getting a USB adapter and going this route. In the long run it will work much better and save you tons of time trying to make the Linux drivers work. Hopefully this helps!
Brandon
Aug 17, 2025 9:02 am
Yeah.. it looks like a bit of a hazzle.. But I did find some working drivers - actually I found an older version ISO that already had the drivers included - installing this went just fine and both NIC was found - I also found the .vib files used to include into this image.. Then with the help of this one: Releases · VFrontDe-Org/ESXi-Customizer-PS
We must be getting closer to a way to get this working 🙂 Just need to find out a way to include the .vib drivers into the 8.0U3e image - as the depot version is no longer available .. I'm sure there must be a way to get it working.. 🙂
Aug 17, 2025 1:49 pm
@whitetigerdk nice! Yes, the older versions do have the ISOs you can find out there with the community drivers slipstreamed. So far, I haven't been able to find 8.x versions that actually work. It is probably one of those things, it is just too much time and effort for not much payoff to try to get it working.
Aug 17, 2025 1:55 pm
I came across this site: VMware ESXi Drive - ESXi.io
ESXi 8.0 Update 1c | 27 JUL 2023 | Build 22088125
RTL8125 / RTL8125B(S)(G)
Aug 18, 2025 7:37 am
@whitetigerdk Interesting, I have not seen this before. Not sure on the source, but might be something to try. Do keep us posted here on your testing.
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