manually download and install vmware tools

Three: if the guest VM is using a VMXNET2 or VMXNET3 ethernet adapter, then the guest VM will not have compatible drivers if VMware Tools is not installed. Both the gcc Compiler and the Linux Kernel sources are mandatory for the successful installation of VMware Tools using the tar.gz file. Two: some security conscious organisations do not allow the gcc Compiler and/or the Linux Kernel sources to be installed on the VM guests. One: this is a repetitive task which is both time consuming and problematic if the number of new VMs to provision is high.

The only option here is to perform manual installations of VMware Tools using the tar.gz file which is included with vSphere 4.1. This is not always an option for a customer who has already configured their entire environment to deploy both ESXi servers and virtual machine guests with PXEBOOT and Kickstart. Yes, you could argue that there is the option of using vCenter Templates along with Customization Specifications (CS) for Linux, and I for one love the fact that the CS works for Linux very well. Not only is this a real pain for customers who have always deployed packages onto their Linux guests with RPMs but also removing the VMware Tools RPM also causes issues with the deployment of Linux guests through PXEBOOT and Kickstart methods. Therefore the linux.iso no longer contains the RPM installer. The reason that the RPM packages are no longer available on the VMware Tools CD image for Linux guest operating systems ISO is to reduce the footprint of ESXi.

This future ESX release is indeed vSphere 4.1. VMware recommends using the tar.gz installer to install VMware Tools on virtual machines with Linux guest operating systems.” “The VMware Tools RPM installer, which is available on the VMware Tools ISO image for Linux guest operating systems, has been deprecated and will be removed in a future ESX release. To quote the vSphere 4.0 U2 release notes: To install you must use the tar.gz package and install it manually. BackgroundĪs of vSphere 4.1, the VMware Tools RPMs are no longer available on the CD image linux.iso. This article explains how to use the Operating System Specific Packages (OSPs) to install VMware Tools during the PXEBOOT and Kickstart of a Linux guest OS running on vSphere 4.1 and above.

Manually download and install vmware tools