Open vm tools and Ubuntu, Fusion 10.1.1

[Mussau]

Having read the continued recommendation to use the open vm tools, I finally gave in, but the situation is very confusing. The thread https://communities.vmware.com/thread/529029 brings up some of the issues, with the confusion of how you get the vmhgfs driver, which the documentation is very bad at describing.

Now I keep getting errors about scripts. I looked at the advice in the thread https://communities.vmware.com/thread/537872, but there is no reference to toolscripts in the VMX file. I get errors like "The VMware Tools resume script did not run successfully in this virtual machine. If you have configured a custom resume script in this virtual machine, make sure that it contains no errors. You can also submit a support request to report this issue." on resume and suspend, and I think on power on and off as well, but there's nothing I can find to even know where to look for the scripts.

At this stage, everything is working OK, but I just get the annoying messages. Any answers on how to get them to go away?

John

[wila]

Hi,

If you have an ubuntu version 16.04 or newer then yes, I'd say use open-vm-tools.

Older versions of ubuntu come with a version of open-vm-tools that has issues and ubuntu does not backport fixes to the older open-vm-tools.

That is - unless something has changed.

The main script that calls you resume script lives here:

/etc/vmware-tools/resume-vm-default

and if you read that script then you can see that the user supplied scripts live in:

/etc/vmware-tools/scripts/

So check the contents of that one and any folder underneath that location.

If that still doesn't help, can you attach a vmware.log please?

Hope this helps,

--

Wil

[Mussau]

I'm afraid I'm more confused than before. The contents of /etc/vmware-tools is:

total 312

  4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root     33 Feb 21 18:21 config

  0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     25 Feb 21 18:21 icu -> /usr/lib/vmware-tools/icu

32 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  32456 Feb 21 18:21 installer.sh

172 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 175842 Feb 21 18:21 locations

  4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   3777 Feb 21 18:21 manifest.txt

  4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   1975 Feb 21 18:21 manifest.txt.shipped

  0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     29 Feb 21 18:21 plugins -> /usr/lib/vmware-tools/plugins

  4 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   3712 Feb 19 11:46 poweroff-vm-default.dpkg-old

  8 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   4364 Feb 21 17:32 poweroff-vm-default.old.0

  4 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   3712 Feb 19 11:46 poweron-vm-default.dpkg-old

  8 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   4364 Feb 21 17:32 poweron-vm-default.old.0

  4 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   3712 Feb 19 11:46 resume-vm-default.dpkg-old

  8 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   4364 Feb 21 17:32 resume-vm-default.old.0

  4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root   4096 Feb 19 11:46 scripts

  4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root    826 Feb 19 11:46 statechange.subr.dpkg-old

  4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   1478 Feb 21 17:32 statechange.subr.old.0

  4 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   3712 Feb 19 11:46 suspend-vm-default.dpkg-old

  8 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   4364 Feb 21 17:32 suspend-vm-default.old.0

  0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root      0 Feb 21 13:35 tools.conf

  4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root     20 Apr 15  2016 tools.conf.old

  4 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   1314 Feb 21 18:21 tpvmlp.conf

12 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   9727 Feb  9  2017 vm-support

  4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root    210 Feb 21 18:21 vmware-tools-libraries.conf

  4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root    107 Feb 21 18:21 vmware-tools-prelink.conf

  4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root    207 Feb 21 18:21 vmware-user.desktop

  4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root     69 Feb  9  2017 xautostart.conf

I see scripts that have .dpkg-old suffix and .old.0 suffixes. Presumably these came about with the installation of open-vm-tools and the original VMware tools. So, is it trying to run one of these, or do I need to change the name, or what?

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Oh that's interesting..

It looks like the install didn't go well.

You don't even have a file named "etc/vmware-tools/resume-vm-default", only copies that have been renamed.

VMware Tools does depend on those scripts to be there so that can indeed explain the errors you are seeing.

Did you uninstall the normal VMware Tools before installing open vm tools?

At this stage I'd say you best:

- take a snapshot

- then uninstall open-vm-tools by running

  sudo apt-get purge open-vm-tools-desktop

  sudo apt-get purge open-vm-tools

- then rename the /etc/vmware-tools folder if it still exists

- and install open-vm-tools again

sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop

Verify that it now works normal and ... commit the snapshot

--

Wil

[Mussau]

Thank you, that worked. It took much longer than expected, as I failed to check free disk space before making a snapshot. There wasn't enough space for the snapshot, and I ended up with a totally non-functional VM. Restoring from a backup took me some hours, but got me going again. Moving the vmware-tools directory and letting it be regenerated worked.

However, I don't seem to have copy/paste integration any more. The settings shows it on, but nothing seems to transfer on the pasteboard. Is there a way to fix that?

John

[wila]

Hi,

Glad to hear that you had a backup to recover your VM from, sad to hear that snapshots can still be destructive if there's insufficient free space.

The integrated clipboard functionality is also part of vmware-tools (as you might have expected)

I take it you are talking about copying text via the clipboard? Are you copying text from the host or from another VM?

--
Wil

[Mussau]

Restarting both the VM and Fusion seem to have fixed the copy/paste issue.