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3rd party VMware tools shown as installed, but not found on the VM

Having trouble updating VMware Tools on one of the VMs in vSphere v6.7u2. The UI says that VMware Tools are not managed by vSphere, are installed, but not running.

vmtools-1.png

This usually points to open-vm-tools package being installed, however they don't seem to be installed at all:

# dpkg-query -s open-vm-tools

dpkg-query: package 'open-vm-tools' is not installed and no information is available

Use dpkg --info (= dpkg-deb --info) to examine archive files,

and dpkg --contents (= dpkg-deb --contents) to list their contents.

vmware-tools isn't installed either:

# dpkg-query -s vmware-tools

dpkg-query: package 'vmware-tools' is not installed and no information is available

Use dpkg --info (= dpkg-deb --info) to examine archive files,

and dpkg --contents (= dpkg-deb --contents) to list their contents.

When I try to install the bundled package, I don't even get an option to - all greyed out

vmtools-2.png

Pretty sure the solution is simple, but Google just keeps showing me how to install VMware tools.

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For anyone having the same issue:

From what I could figure out this is due to having upgraded vSphere from 5 to 6. The VM previously had an older version of open-vm-tools installed, which caused it to become unrecognisable.
The solution is to remove open-vm-tools via your package manager (which was done in my case, but not by me - which is why I couldn't find the old version), then install the new version to trigger vSphere to update the meta. Afterwards you can either keep the open-vm-tools package or remove it again to install vmware-tools bundled with vSphere.

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UnS3eN
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Jump to solution

For anyone having the same issue:

From what I could figure out this is due to having upgraded vSphere from 5 to 6. The VM previously had an older version of open-vm-tools installed, which caused it to become unrecognisable.
The solution is to remove open-vm-tools via your package manager (which was done in my case, but not by me - which is why I couldn't find the old version), then install the new version to trigger vSphere to update the meta. Afterwards you can either keep the open-vm-tools package or remove it again to install vmware-tools bundled with vSphere.

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