How to enable ZTP in vEOS images

So, while Arista enables ZTP by default on EOS, they elected to disable it on vEOS. That sucks.

To fix it, you’ll have to remove the startup-config file which usually resides in /mnt/flash/ from the image. I use the combined vmdk for vEOS 4.18.1F (vEOS-lab-4.18.1F-combined.vmdk).

Step 1 is to enable qemu-nbd and in order to do so you’ll need a kernel module.

apt install nbd-client
modprobe nbd max_part=16


Step 2 requires you to use qemu-nbd

qemu-nbd -c /dev/nbd0 vEOS-lab-4.18.1F-combined.vmdk

Step 3 mounts the image:

mount /dev/nbd0p2 /mnt

Step 4 finally deletes the startup-config file:

rm /mnt/startup-config

Step 5 unmount and clean up

unmount /mnt
qemu-nbd -d /dev/nbd0

And done!