Problem when installing the VMWare Tools in Ubuntu 10.04 (Packages/OSP)

[Thomy23]

Hello Guys

I have a problem when i tried to install the VMWare-Tools from the Ubuntu Packages provided by VMWare (currently i run ESX4U2 as it officially supports Ubuntu 10.04). I added the package-repo to my sources.list:

deb http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/4.0latest/ubuntu/ lucid main restricted

And then i tried a "apt-get install vmware-tools-nox". But this causes some depency problems (i know quite a bit about debian packaging), so here's the depency structure and the problem:

vmware-tools-nox

vmware-tools-common

vmware-open-vm-tools-common

vmware-open-vm-tools-nox

vmware-open-vm-tools-common

So everything depends on the "vmware-open-vm-tools-common" package in the end. And this package depends on

"vmware-open-vm-tools-kmod-8.0.3-0.258828"

Which cannot be found. I searched the whole lucid repo and i just can't find it (neither in "main", nor in "restricted"). Is there a problem or have i made something wrong?

Because with the current situation it's just not possible to install the packages for ubuntu (however, installing from the tarball works but this is not what i wanted to to).

Greets Thomas

[AntonVZhbankov]

Have you tried to install VMware Tools usual way?

Right-Click / Guest / Install VMware Tools?

---

MCSA, MCTS Hyper-V, VCP 3/4, VMware vExpert

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[Thomy23]

As i said in my post above this works, but i want to install the vmware-tools from the ubuntu packages, as this is supported by vmware.

[MauroBonder]

see if helps.

follow guide at attach

*If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful"*

[Thomy23]

Page 26 of this manual (which i have already read) sais under "installing OSP for an Ubuntu operating system:

Install the kernel modules for the kernel type and version. For example:

- For ESX/ESXi 3.5

$ sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools-kmod-<type> vmware-tools-kmod-<type>

<type> = the value returned in Step 1.

- For ESX/ESXi 4.0

Installing the kernel modules separately is no longer needed.

So how can it be the the latest (4.0U2) packages still have the missing kernel package depency?

[marcelc]

hi all ,

i have a same issue here, upgraded ESX4U2 , clean installed ubuntu 10.04 32 bit version ,and trying to install

OSP provided kernel packages. this seems to me a packaging bug and make me wonder what "supported" means ?

did they ever tested this , our is this package just missing ....

in that case this shouldn't be that hard to fix that ?

for my case, tar installation is not a option. we have some +20 production servers , non have gcc installed and will never have them installed.

We currently using ubuntu 8.04 with ESX3u5 and OSP packages. we reviewing our upgrade path for our guest vm and ESXi to 4 , and where waiting until this was included. So we need pre compiled kernel modules matching the running kernel.

[AntonVZhbankov]

Just curious. You don't want to install gcc for some reasons, probably security, but you're going to install latest ubuntu to production? Not RHEL or SLES, or even CentOS.

Looks a little bit strange for me.

---

MCSA, MCTS Hyper-V, VCP 3/4, VMware vExpert

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[AntonVZhbankov]

>but i want to install the vmware-tools from the ubuntu packages, as this is supported by vmware.

And this is clearly don't work. You should contact VMware support then.

---

MCSA, MCTS Hyper-V, VCP 3/4, VMware vExpert

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[Thomy23]

I use the OSP packages due to the same reason as marcelc. Next mondey, i'll open a case at vmware concerning the issue and let you know if there is some progress.

And btw. why not use Ubuntu 10.04 as a productive OS, it is supported by Canonical to have package updates up to 6 years and it's also supported as a VM OS by vmware.

[AntonVZhbankov]

>Next mondey, i'll open a case at vmware concerning the issue and let you know if there is some progress.

Looks like it is common problem, interesting what's the root cause.

>And btw. why not use Ubuntu 10.04 as a productive OS, it is supported by Canonical to have package updates up to 6 years and it's also supported as a VM OS by vmware.

Just precautions. Ubuntu is almost on bleeding edge, with new packages, newest kernels - this leads to instability. I prefer stable enterprise distibs like RHEL and SLES. In many cases they are the only choice because of application requiremens, for. ex. Oracle DB.

---

MCSA, MCTS Hyper-V, VCP 3/4, VMware vExpert

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[Thomy23]

Hello again

Yesterday i opened a case at VMWare Support and i'm still waiting for a reply. I explanied te exact problem andi hope that they'll fix the issue.

[marcelc]

don't see any reason to change to RH/SLES or CentOS . ubuntu is supported by ESX4U2 and packages where provided.

our software is currently build around ubuntu/debian with al lot of custom packages so don't won't tot spend my time repackaging for a RPM based

setup.

point is that VMware provided OSP packages , but they currently don't work because of dependency issues .

I also noted in release note that OSP packages will be removed in future release in favor of "bundle" distribution.

now i hope they will not do that because well create packages are a lot beter that reinstalling a bunch of bundle scripts.

[marcelc]

Nice,

please let us know if you get any response from vmware. last i check , and that was yesterday , it still didn't work

[DSTAVERT]

Just use whatever package manager you you use in Ubuntu to install tool directly from Ubuntu.

You can eliminate the OSP repository. VMware released the tools code to encourage packagers to directly support them.

As in

apt-get install open-vm-tools

[Thomy23]

Hi guys

Last week, i got a reply for my opened case at vmware. I was told that the initial install of the vmware OSP packages is supported, but when you upgrade, you have the problem that the compiled modules don't link to the updated kernel.

And i was further told that the upgrade of the OSP packages is not supported, so i have to remove the OSP packages before a kernel upgrade and reinstall them later (letting the installer compile the new modules). As this doesn't make sense to me, i'll switch back to manual tarball installation (and have my template always updated to the latest vmware tools so i don't have the problem when creating new servers)

[roadfox]

to mee it looks that the available deb file is called:

vmware-open-vm-tools-kmod-source_8.0.3-0.258828_ubuntu10.04.amd64.deb

but the dependency is on: vmware-open-vm-tools-kmod

so how to get vmware-open-vm-tools-kmod from source?

[MauroBonder]

http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/4.0/ubuntu/dists/intrepid/main/binary-i386/Packages

http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/3.5u3/ubuntu/dists/hardy/main/binary-i386/Packages

*If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful"*