VMware Communities : Unanswered Threads - Tools OS-Specific Packaging

VMware Tools Kills Native Boot of Linux

exppi163 — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:54:17 GMT

I've successfully installed a native CentOS and rEFIt using Bootcamp,* then made a VMware virtual machine that boots the native partition,** then installed VMware Tools***, and an NVIDIA driver.**** Problem is, now the CentOS won't boot up properly in native -- the native boot gets stuck on "Starting vmware-tools", and X just doesn't work. Everything works great when booting as a VM, though. I suppose I could run vmware-uninstall-tools and vmware-install (or whatever the install procedure command is) alternately, but that's highly inconvenient and possibly not very robust.

Does anyone have an easy way of setting up the dual native + virtual CentOS so that it boots up nicely in both? There must be a simple virtual machine detector shell command that can be put in the appropriate init files on boot and X initialization.

*See here. Make sure that you use the rEFIt option to sync the MBR and GPT partition tables before grub-install; otherwise, you'll get the /boot/grub/stage1 error.

**See here. This just worked for me when I used "/Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/vmware-rawdiskCreator create /dev/disk0 3 nativeDiskBoot ide" and "... 4 nativeDiskRoot ide" (my partition, with /dev/sda4 an LVM), then created a new VM (don't copy files!) with these two virtual disks, nativeDiskBoot and nativeDiskRoot.

***See here, here, and after setting the non-XEN kernel to be default in /boot/grub/grub.conf and "grub-install /dev/sda3".

****See here, here; run nvidia installer with "-k$(uname -r)" option.

auto update tools for custom kernel?

msuchoff — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:06:05 GMT

The precompiled binary modules in VMwareTools are not up to date with latest kernels for CentOS 5.3. To get around this, we compile modules for our kernel. We then distribute these modules with virtual machines that do not include gcc or other tools necessary to recompile tools.

If vm is setup to automatically check and update tools, will the update fail because if latest tools do not contain modules for kernel and vm doesn't contain gcc to compile new modules?

This is important because we don't ship virtual appliances with gcc necessary to compile tools - and our experience is that VMware does not keep up with compiled modules for every kernel update shipped by our Linux vendor(s).

Connect to perfmon failed using Capacity Planner v2.6.1

dcosta25 — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:45:28 GMT

I'm trying to add a windows 2000 server to our capacity planner so we can capture it's data. I'm am receiving "connection to Remote Registry failed" & " connection to perfmon failed". I noticed using Zenmap that ports 136, 137, and 138 are not open. Are these ports use during the capacity planner's discovery? If so, how can you manually open these ports.

distributing vmware tools binaries

tigerpaws — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 04:25:12 GMT

As I said in another thread, I am running fc10 on esxi 3.5 u3.

Although some modules don't compile, some more important ones do, especially vmxnet and vmblock. My problem is that I don't have a compiler on all my systems, sometimes I need to install vmware tools where there is no compiler. Once I have compiled vmxnet and vmblock on one machine, what must I do to insert these compiled versions into the vmware tools installer so that it finds them when I install on another machine?

vmware tools for fc10 fail to compile some modules

tigerpaws — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 04:19:23 GMT

I'm running esxi 3.5 u3 - when I try to install vmware tools on fedora core 10 (linux kernel 2.6.27.5).

vmmemctl breaks:

os.c: 590 erro struct proc_dir_entry has no member named get_info

vmghfs breaks:

bdhandler.c:29:27: erro: asm/semaphore.h : no such file or directory

I have checked in the kernel include files, and effectively these errors are correct. When I lookad at earlier 2.6 kernels, for example 2.6.18, proc_dir_entry did have a memeber named get_info, but no longer.

Is there anything I can do? (although this is not that critical) .

Otherwise, vmware-tools compile ok.

VMware Tools -So which command do believe? One says version 6 and the other says 3.0.2?

amittul — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:42:14 GMT

Hi ,

Please check the output of the commands

[# vmware-config-tools.pl -h

VMware Tools 3.0.2 build-52542 for Linux configurator

..# vmware-checkvm

VMware software version 6 (good)

So which command do beleive ? One says ver 6 and the other says 3.0.2 ?

Thanks,

VMTools Cross Virtual Hardware Compatibility

vh1too — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:28:25 GMT

Hello All,

We use VMWare (Workstation, Server, ESX, etc ) for application and PC build process testing. The same PC build process and OS image is used for all hardware. We create what we call "driver sets" to support each model PC. We have a VMWare driver set which, basically, just installs VMTools. Driver sets are automatically selected by the build processes based on Model Number information stored in BIOS. For VMware this value is "VMware Virtual Platform".

So my question.... Since every verson of Virtual machine is branded the same in BIOS (VMware Virtual Platform) how can i tell what version of VMware tools to install? Or can i just install the latest version of VMware Tools and expect it to work regardless of what Virtual hardware is running.

Why does VMWare do this? Why can't they brand "VMware Virtual Platform Version 4","VMware Virtual Platform Version 5", etc... If i can tell the difference between a "Latitude C600" and a "Latitude C610" why can't i tell what model VM my OS is running on?