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Re: ESX VMWare Tools Silent Install/Upgrade ANSWER!

30. Oct 17, 2005 12:46 PM in response to: diztorted
Click to view pmorrison's profile Enthusiast
pmorrison
75 posts since
Oct 27, 2004
Why, oh why, does this have to be so hard.

I have tried, and used succesfully, the GPO method but it does not help for new installs.

I am using HP's Rapid Deployment Pack (from Altiris) and am trying to get the darn Tools to install during a run once after the OS starts up and cant seem to get past the driver signing policy....

Re: ESX VMWare Tools Silent Install/Upgrade ANSWER!

31. Oct 17, 2005 1:31 PM in response to: pmorrison
Click to view diztorted's profile Master
diztorted
733 posts since
Mar 14, 2005
Silly question, but I'll ask (and this is foolishly assuming that you have, and use, VirtualCenter)... Why don't you just create a template that already has tools installed?

Re: ESX VMWare Tools Silent Install/Upgrade ANSWER!

32. Oct 17, 2005 2:39 PM in response to: diztorted
Click to view pmorrison's profile Enthusiast
pmorrison
75 posts since
Oct 27, 2004
we are trying to use one tool so that all operations has to do is drop a package of rdp jobs on a waiting machine, vm or real, to deploy a new server. we have about 30 other rdp jobs that have to run after the server is "up". if I use a template I will either have to update two locations and teach folks to use two tools, or put it all in an image... which I don't want to do.

Re: ESX VMWare Tools Silent Install/Upgrade ANSWER!

33. Oct 17, 2005 3:51 PM in response to: pmorrison
Click to view diztorted's profile Master
diztorted
733 posts since
Mar 14, 2005
What I would recommend doing is reading up in the thread where doslager referenced how he accomplished the silent update. He, like our org., used local security policy instead of relying on GPO. Our folks who take care of our software pushes made a pretty clean way to update the local security driver signing policy.. It may be just the fix (assuming you haven't tried it)..

Re: ESX VMWare Tools Silent Install/Upgrade ANSWER!

34. Oct 18, 2005 5:28 AM in response to: diztorted
Click to view pmorrison's profile Enthusiast
pmorrison
75 posts since
Oct 27, 2004
AhhhhHA!!!! Seems my whole problem all along was that I had a space at the end of every line when I coppied the text of the .inf file from this forum and my test box. Also, there was a space in $CHICAGO $ which should be $CHICAGO$ <-no space after O...

Now things are working!!!

Re: ESX VMWare Tools Silent Install/Upgrade ANSWER!

35. Oct 18, 2005 7:14 AM in response to: pmorrison
Click to view diztorted's profile Master
diztorted
733 posts since
Mar 14, 2005
Congrats :)

Re: ESX VMWare Tools Silent Install/Upgrade ANSWER!

36. Oct 25, 2005 9:51 AM in response to: diztorted
Click to view MattHoag's profile Novice
MattHoag
39 posts since
Sep 2, 2004
Everyone here has done some good work and spent a lot of time on this problem. I appreciate your time and effort as this is a problem that plagues all ESX administrators. Which brings me to the real point of my post... Why has VMWare not addressed this issue?! This should be a simple "setup.exe [/upgrade] [/silent]" command that I can push however I want, whenever I want without creating a three-ringed circus of scripts and reg hacks.

Re: ESX VMWare Tools Silent Install/Upgrade ANSWER!

37. Oct 25, 2005 10:14 AM in response to: MattHoag
Click to view jasonboche's profile Champion
jasonboche
5,896 posts since
Jan 7, 2004
Everyone here has done some good work and spent a lot
of time on this problem. I appreciate your time and
effort as this is a problem that plagues all ESX
administrators. Which brings me to the real point of
my post... Why has VMWare not addressed this issue?!
This should be a simple "setup.exe [/upgrade]
[/silent]" command that I can push however I want,
whenever I want without creating a three-ringed
circus of scripts and reg hacks.

This question was brought up in the "Ask the VMTN forum experts panel" session. JMills of VMware responded with the answer. The response as I remember it went something like this "This is a guest OS issue which is not something that VMware spends much of its time focusing on. Use conventional methods or 3rd party tools to figure out how to automate this process. VMware prefers to allocate its resources on virtualization technology development rather than minor guest issues."

If I got any of the above wrong, feel free to correct me.

Re: ESX VMWare Tools Silent Install/Upgrade ANSWER!

38. Oct 25, 2005 11:25 AM in response to: MattHoag
Click to view diztorted's profile Master
diztorted
733 posts since
Mar 14, 2005
Which brings me to the real point of my post... Why has VMWare
not addressed this issue?! This should be a simple "setup.exe
[/upgrade] [/silent]" command that I can push however I want,
whenever I want without creating a three-ringed
circus of scripts and reg hacks.

The easy answer? The drivers aren't signed. Why they aren't signed is a great mystery, even though I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft plain didn't want to. They tried acquiring VMware way back when, and VMware said nope. Probably a little bit of animosity there..

Re: ESX VMWare Tools Silent Install/Upgrade ANSWER!

39. Oct 26, 2005 12:54 PM in response to: diztorted
Click to view moenster's profile Master
moenster
956 posts since
May 19, 2004
Hi all

Nothing new here, I just want to summarize the stuff from this thread into what I have put together and am using from Altiris rapid deployment.

The reg-, mst- and inf-files are all documented in this thread.

Regards Henrik

W2k:
SET VMTOOLPATH=
path to vmtools install
regedit /s "%VMTOOLPATH%\disableDriverSigningWarning.reg"
change user /install
Msiexec /I "%VMTOOLPATH%\VMware Tools.msi" /qn TRANSFORMS="%VMTOOLPATH%\hwaccel.mst" addlocal=all REINSTALLMODE=vamus REBOOT="ReallySuppress"
change user /execute
regedit /s "%VMTOOLPATH%\enableDriverSigningWarning.reg"
del /q %VMTOOLPATH%\scrap.sdb
del /q %VMTOOLPATH%\scrap2.sdb

W2k3:
SET VMTOOLPATH=
path to vmtools install
secedit /configure /db %VMTOOLPATH%\scrap.sdb /cfg %VMTOOLPATH%\DriverSignDisable.inf
change user /install
Msiexec /I "%VMTOOLPATH%\VMware Tools.msi" /qn TRANSFORMS="%VMTOOLPATH%\hwaccel.mst" addlocal=all REINSTALLMODE=vamus REBOOT="ReallySuppress"
change user /execute
secedit /configure /db %VMTOOLPATH%\scrap2.sdb /cfg %VMTOOLPATH%\DriverSignEnable.inf
del /q %VMTOOLPATH%\scrap.sdb
del /q %VMTOOLPATH%\scrap2.sdb

Re: ESX VMWare Tools Silent Install/Upgrade ANSWER!

40. Oct 26, 2005 8:09 PM in response to: moenster
Click to view jasonboche's profile Champion
jasonboche
5,896 posts since
Jan 7, 2004
Are your scripts written specifically for Windows servers with Terminal Services and Citrix? I noticed the change user commands.

Jas

Re: ESX VMWare Tools Silent Install/Upgrade ANSWER!

41. Oct 26, 2005 10:28 PM in response to: jasonboche
Click to view moenster's profile Master
moenster
956 posts since
May 19, 2004
No, not specifically for TS. We just do that with almost all of our scripts to ensure compatibility, as we have a lot of terminal servers in our organisation.

Regards Henrik

Re: ESX VMWare Tools Silent Install/Upgrade ANSWER!

42. Oct 27, 2005 2:41 AM in response to: quihong
Click to view TomVDB's profile Enthusiast
TomVDB
109 posts since
Apr 5, 2005
finally this script is finished.. and most of all.. it's working.
tried it on a few servers (w2k3 SP1) today

normally we will try to distribute it with sms on our next esx patch, normally it will save us many hours
---

Maybe another related question.. now that we know how to update our vm's is there a way to get the "new" tools out of the upgrade tar from vmware?

so in fact we want to upgrade our vm's first and afterwards upgrade the esx.. so after the esx reboot all the vm's are ok..

i know the location of the vmtools iso at the esx /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages but where are they in the upgrade package so that we can extract them in some way?

Message was edited by:
TomVDB

Re: ESX VMWare Tools Silent Install/Upgrade ANSWER!

43. Jan 19, 2006 1:53 PM in response to: quihong
Click to view JRTek7's profile Lurker
JRTek7
1 posts since
Jan 19, 2006
Hello Forum, couple of questions...

- Using the "secedit" option posted by doslager to import the policy settings to enable\disable unsigned driver signing...do you have to create the *.sdb file, or is this just a (dummy) text file to complete the syntax?

- Has anyone tried this method under a Windows XP VM? I'm trying to use this method under an XP-VM, and can actually witness the necessary change (silently succeed) to the policy via gpedit.msc, however I'm still receving the hardware install wizard when the MSI kicks off, and the policy "mysteriously" changes back to (warn but allow)

Any assistance will be appreciated, and TIA

- Jay

Re: ESX VMWare Tools Silent Install/Upgrade ANSWER!

44. Feb 9, 2006 5:54 AM in response to: moenster
Click to view ZePierre's profile Lurker
ZePierre
1 posts since
Feb 9, 2006
Hi Henrik

I can't find the .mst file.

Could you show it, or mail it to me

ph_p (at) hotmail dot com
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