New VMware Tools for XP in 6.7U1?

[Raudi]

Hi,

after upgrading my environment to 6.7U1 a Windows XP VM is reporting, that there is a new Version of VMware Tools available.

Must be a bug, or is there really a new version of VMware Tools available? If so, where?

Kind regards

Stefan

[SupreetK]

Is it reporting for all the VMs or just this Windows XP VM? Is this being reported on the VM Summary tab?

Cheers,

Supreet

[Raudi]

Look at this screenshot:

[SupreetK]

Is it showing for all the VMs?

Cheers,

Supreet

[Raudi]

I have only one Windows XP VM, on the rest of the VM's (Windows 7, Server 2012R2 and up) the message was shown too, but there i updated the VMware Tools and the message disappears, as expected...

When i try this on the XP VM i got a error thet the required iso isn't available. Shure, XP, 2000, 2003 is on the winPreVista.iso which isn't part of the normal ESX installation. But the newest version of this VMware Tools i found are the Version 10.0.12.

I tryed to install, but i can only select Repair, Modify or Uninstall, so the same version must be installed...

[Dave_the_Wave]

At the time I am writing this, the latest is VMware Tools 10.3.2 "12 SEP 2018 | Build 9925305", and can be applied by just running the .exe from inside the Guest OS.

So far I have only done this on 2012R2 VMs. I haven't bothered with the 2008R2/2003/Win7 VMs.

I believe the latest version of VMware Tools for Xp/2003 is 10.0.12. Later versions are documented not to support, and do not install.

Unless you're having a terribly noticable issue, I'd just suppress it, especially for a Xp VM of which even super early VMware Tools worked fine on it.

P.S.-Don't uninstall a previous version of the tools. It is designed to upgrade over it, or else you will lose the MAC addresses of your vmxnet3 adapters.

[Raudi]

I tryed already to install "VMware-tools-10.3.2-9925305-i386.exe" and got that this is not a valid Win32-Application...

[bluefirestorm]

I think it is a bug. I get the same prompt with an XP VM on VMware Player 14.1.3 on Windows. It also gets prompted for new VMware Tools.

But the legacy Windows OS VMware Tools (pre-Vista, pre2K) has been frozen for around 2 years. So version 10.0.12 (10252) is the last version for Windows XP VMs.

https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2016/10/introducing-vmware-tools-10-1-10-0-12.html

https://packages.vmware.com/tools/versions

I don't know if ESXi 6.7U1 has the same problem with reading the tools manifest files (chances are it is). But on the XP VM on Player 14.1.3 on Windows it had a problem getting the manifest information; whereas for VMware Player 15.0.0; it gets through to read the manifest file(s). So you can check the vmware.log of the XP VM see whether it manage to read the manifest file or not.

This is from Player 15.0.0 of an XP VM and it manages to read the manifest file and set a minimum version as 8384 whereas a newer version 10252 is already installed.

| I125: GetHostManifests: Extracting the manifest file.

| I125: ToolsISO: open of C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Player\winPreVista.iso.sha failed: Could not find the file

| I125: ToolsISO: Unable to read hash file C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Player\winPreVista.iso.sha, ignoring.

| I125: GetHostManifests: Done extracting the manifest file.

| I125: Using ToolsMinVersion = 8384

[Raudi · Accepted solution]

o.k.

2018-10-16T19:49:23.970Z| vcpu-0| I125: TOOLS Received tools.set.version rpc call, version = 10252, setting type to 1 from guest OS

2018-10-16T19:49:23.970Z| vcpu-0| I125: Tools_SetVersionAndType did nothing; new tools version (10252) and type (1) match old Tools version and type

2018-10-16T19:49:23.970Z| vcpu-0| I125: TOOLS refreshing value for isoImageExists (refreshCount=1, lastCount=0).

2018-10-16T19:49:24.060Z| vcpu-0| I125: ToolsISO: Updated cached value for imageName to 'winPreVista.iso'.

2018-10-16T19:49:24.060Z| vcpu-0| I125: ToolsISO: Selected Tools ISO 'winPreVista.iso' for 'winXPPro' guest.

2018-10-16T19:49:24.060Z| worker-2102789| I125: ToolsISO: Selected Tools ISO 'winPreVista.iso' for 'winXPPro' guest.

2018-10-16T19:49:24.075Z| vcpu-0| I125: TOOLS updated cached value for isoImageExists to 0.

2018-10-16T19:49:24.075Z| vcpu-0| I125: VMware ESX did not ship with the tools ISO.

2018-10-16T19:49:24.075Z| vcpu-0| I125: TOOLS Setting autoupgrade-checked TRUE.

2018-10-16T19:49:24.194Z| worker-2102789| I125: ToolsISO: Failed to get realpath for '/usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/winPreVista.iso' (error=2)

2018-10-16T19:49:24.194Z| worker-2102789| I125: GetHostManifests: Extracting the manifest file.

2018-10-16T19:49:24.312Z| worker-2102789| I125: ToolsISO: Failed to get realpath for '/usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/winPreVista.iso' (error=2)

2018-10-16T19:49:24.336Z| worker-2102789| I125: Error getting host tools manifest files.

2018-10-16T19:49:24.336Z| worker-2102789| I125: ToolsISO: Refreshing imageName for 'winXPPro' (refreshCount=1, lastCount=1).

2018-10-16T19:49:24.372Z| worker-2102789| I125: ToolsISO: Updated cached value for imageName to 'winPreVista.iso'.

2018-10-16T19:49:24.372Z| worker-2102789| I125: ToolsISO: Selected Tools ISO 'winPreVista.iso' for 'winXPPro' guest.

2018-10-16T19:49:24.406Z| worker-2102789| I125: ToolsISO: Failed to get realpath for '/usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/winPreVista.iso' (error=2)

2018-10-16T19:49:24.406Z| worker-2102789| I125: GetHostManifests: Extracting the manifest file.

2018-10-16T19:49:24.430Z| worker-2102789| I125: ToolsISO: Failed to get realpath for '/usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/winPreVista.iso' (error=2)

2018-10-16T19:49:24.441Z| worker-2102789| I125: Error getting host tools manifest files.

2018-10-16T19:49:24.441Z| worker-2102789| I125: Using ToolsMinVersion = 8193

2018-10-16T19:49:24.441Z| worker-2102789| I125: ToolsVersionGetStatusWorkerThread: Tools status 2 derived from environment

2018-10-16T19:49:24.441Z| vmx| I125: TOOLS using cached value 0 for isoImageExists (refreshCount=1, lastCount=1).

2018-10-16T19:49:24.441Z| vmx| I125: VMXVmdb_SetToolsVersionStatus: status value set to 'ok', 'supportedOld', install impossible

Now i uploaded the 5 winPreVista files to "/usr/lib/vmware/isoimages" and now the VM don't prompt for a update...

So this will be a workaround....

[faf1967]

What exactly did you have to do to implement the work around?

[EberleITGuy]

I had the same question, so here's what i did:

Downloaded legacy tools zip file from https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=VMTOOLS10012&productId=896

Then extracted the 5 files to a directory:

-winPreVista.iso

-winPreVista.iso.sha

-winPreVista.iso.sig

-winPreVista_avr_manifest.txt

-winPreVista_avr_manifest.txt.sig

Then fired up PSFTP (from putty) and connected to my host using root credentials:

psftp> lcd <path to files>

psftp> cd /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/

psftp> mput *

Then SSH'ed into that host and copied the files  to the other hosts in the cluster:

[root@myServer1:/usr/lib/vmware] cd /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages

[root@myServer1:/usr/lib/vmware] scp winPreVista* root@myServer2:/usr/lib/vmware/isoimages

You may need to enable the ssh client to be allowed out of your firewall on the esx host if it's not already. You'll also need ssh enabled.

See here:http://www.vmwarearena.com/how-to-copy-files-between-esxi-hosts-using-scp-command/

And that works for me.