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Unable to upgrade VMwareTools in Fedora Core 6

Hello,

I installed VMware-Fusion-e.x.p-49528 and created a number of Fedora Core 6 virtual guests. I installed VMwareTools-e.x.p-49528.i386.rpm onto each virtual guest. The installations and guest creations worked perfectly and without error.

Yesterday I purchased Fusion 1.0, installed it and applied the serial number. I proved that I am using VMware Fusion 1.0 (51348) by choosing "About VMware Fusion" from the "VMware Fusion" menu. All of the Fedora Core 6 virtual guests start just fine.

Now it is time to upgrade VMwareTools. I execute the following command as root:

rpm -Uvh VMwareTools-e.x.p-51348.i386.rpm

You can see from the attachment in this post that my attempt at upgrading this fails with a pre scriptlet failed error.

Naturally I executed rpm -qa as root to see if VMwareTools is in fact installed. I find no indication that VMwareTools was ever installed. So, of course, I use rpm -i VMwareTools-e.x.p-51348.i386.rpm as root, which fails too.

So, what's up with that?

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multiverse
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I believe my system went into this state because I attempted to install without RPM. It's a classic mistake, where you install one version by RPM, forget that you did that, and try to install it with the tarball instead. My attempt at installing with the tarball failed, so I reverted to using the RPM. I was able to see how the error was generated by executing the RPM command with verbosity like so:

rpm -Uh -vv VMwareTools-e.x.p-51348.i386.rpm

The output complains (a couple of pages up) that "A previous installation of VMware Software has been detected," which eventually causes problems for the script. The solution to this minor train wreck is to:

rm -Rf /etc/vmware-tools

that is if your installation was done originally by RPM.

I filed a support ticket and was reminded by VMware that Fedora Core 6 is an unsupported virtual guest OS. Fedora Core 6 with VMwareTools runs just fine under FC 6, so I mention it here in case you find this information useful.

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