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kelwood
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Unable to upgrade VMtools after ESXi 6.5 upgrade

I have upgraded my lab environment to 6.5 and am now unable to mount the vmtools installer through the web client. I was successful mounting the iso directly to the VM and upgrading interactively but this will not be scalable to several hundred VMs. The error I received was: "The required VMware Tools ISO image does not exist or is inaccessible. vix error code = 21001"

Is there a setting that needs to be changed post 6.5 upgrade to fix this?

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kelwood
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I actually did find my problem. I had hardened my environment using the vSphere 6.0 Hardening Guide provided by VMware and one of the settings in there was an advanced configuration parameter on each VM:

isolation.tools.autoInstall.disable = TRUE needed to be set to false.

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Techie01
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Can you please confirm that the tools ISO exists under  ls -lrt /store/packages/ directory.

Also, please confirm "ls -lrt /"  shows store and locker directories with /locker pointing to /store

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kelwood
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Thank you for the response. The tools ISO exists in /store/packages/6.5.0/vmtools and the /locker directory does point to /store. Do I need to bring the ISO up a couple levels?

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jedijeff
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I am having the same issue. And I have the exact directory structure on the ESXi 6.5 host. Did you ever find a solution?

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kelwood
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I actually did find my problem. I had hardened my environment using the vSphere 6.0 Hardening Guide provided by VMware and one of the settings in there was an advanced configuration parameter on each VM:

isolation.tools.autoInstall.disable = TRUE needed to be set to false.

kelwood
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If this is your problem as well you can run this in PowerCLI to change that setting on all VMs in your environment without shutting them down.


Connect-VIServer -Server <vCenter Server>

$vms = Get-VM

foreach ($vm in $vms) {

New-AdvancedSetting -Entity $vm -Name isolation.tools.autoInstall.disable -value $false -force -Confirm:$false


}


Disconnect-VIserver -Confirm:$false

rlupton
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Thanks, this was the issue for me

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Zethcon
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I found that by simply changing the OS level for the VM I was able to get the Tools to load. Power down the VM then edit the settings. When the option page opens click the VM Options tab then expand the General Options drop down then just to the right Change the Guest OS version to match the VM OS. In my case I have Linux VM and I had to switch it from Other Linux 64 bit to the correct version of CentOS. I powered up the VM and I was able to install the tools.

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Tim2k18
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Hello,

i have the same problem, but not the same parameter. Also i didnt harden my vcenter enviroment. Any ideas?

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jrhaakenson
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Bump.  I'm running ESXi 6.7.0 Update 1 Build 10764712 and I have successfully uploaded the current VMware Tools 10.3.5-10430147 package (including the Windows ISO) to the ESXi repository at locker/packages/vmtoolsRepo/.  I have also ensured the VM Configuration setting isolation.tools.autoInstall.disable = FALSE is configured correctly.  The ESXi host recognizes its VMs require a VM Tools update so I know my UserVars.ProductLockerLocation is also set correctly to /locker/packages/vmtoolsRepo/ in the ESXi host configuration.  But I still receive the same error; The required VMWare Tools ISO image does not exist or is inaccessible.  vix error code = 21001.  Please help.

EDIT:  I think I found the solution.  After configuring isolation.tools.autoInstall.disable = FALSE the VM must be completely shut down and powered back on for the configuration setting to take effect.  A warm restart will not do it.  It must be powered all the way off and then powered back on.