I suspect its because the same tools are used for ESX as Workstation, hence hte inclusion of the HGFS. We've seen the same issue, and found it benign, so we just ignore it.

--Matt

Hello,

VMware has finally unified all the different versions of VMware Tools. VMHGFS does not work on ESX that is a fact, you can also further disable it within the VM using the isolation tools setting. However, the configuration step will still add the line unless you edit /etc/vmware-tools/locations and change VMHGFS_CONFED from yes to no. However to be ever vigilant just commenting out the line and setting the isolation tool setting is the best method just in case you migrate the VM to somewhere else.

But yes, if ESX is in use the driver can not be loaded and even if it was the other side of the equation (ESX) does not provide that functionality.


Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

Have you run into any other issues with 5.1 on 3.5? It's not yet officially supported but hopefully when the release a patch to fix this issue it will be.

Hello,

You will have to comment out the line from /etc/fstab, even the must recent version adds this in.


Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.
CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354
As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

Hello,

Short of modifying the vmware-config-tools.pl, there is no way.


Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.
CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354
As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

On the /etc/fstab file and this subject. Make sure that you have a backup copy of /etc/fstab before running vmware-config-tools.p, as the script file does not always edit the fstab file correctly and we have had many cases of our fstab files being defaulted on our VMs and loosing all our NFS mounts.

A.