The problem with VMware Tools

When running a Linux Virtual Machine on a VMware product (like ESX Server) it is very important to install and use the VMwareTools package from VMware. However, VMware provides pre-built modules of their optimized drivers only for very few kernels, mainly the release kernels of the important distributions.

Unfortunately it takes 4-6 month for VMware to ship an updated VMwareTools package that supports the "latest" kernel (which is not any more "latest" by that time). The "supported" solution offered by VMware is to install kernel sources and a compile environemt to build the modules from source on each an every VM !

This solution grossly contradicts my idea of a good Linux operating practice because kernel sources and build environemnts should be restricted to specialized build systems and not spread out onto all servers for rootkits and trojans to use.

The solution

The solution I would like to offer to the greater public is to install a matching addon package (VMwareTools-modules) that contains the missing modules as pre-built modules and thus enables the VMware Tools configuration program (vmware-tools-config.pl) to work on the new kernel without building the modules from source.

With this addon package it is thus possible to use the latest kernels on Virtual Machines without installing a kernel build environment in each VM. The addon package matches both the VMware Tools and the kernel version. One should therefore keep all available (and new) versions of the VMwareTools-module package in a local RPM repository so that the installer can automatically fetch the matching package on kernel updates etc.

Currently this page and the packages available here work on SuSE Linux (tested on SLES10 and openSuSE 10.2) only. Patches to support Red Hat / Fedora and other distros are most welcome !

Usage

If none of the versions published here (see below) match your VMware product version and desired kernel version, then you will have to build your own (I recommend using a dedicated compile VM for such tasks):

• Install kernel-source and kernel-syms and all kernel flavors (bigsmp, smp, default, debug, xen, kdump) and the usual build environment (C/C++ Development)
• Download the latest Source RPM
• Install the VMwareTools RPM package from your VMware product (no need to configure it)
• Build a new RPM package (which will match the installed kernel and VMwareTools package) with s.th. like this:

  rpmbuild --rebuild VMwareTools-modules-1.1.src.rpm
  

  The result will end with lines like that:

  Processing files: VMwareTools-modules-1.1_6532.44356_2.6.18.2_34-0
  Finding  Provides: /usr/lib/rpm/find-provides VMwareTools-modules
  Finding  Requires: /usr/lib/rpm/find-requires VMwareTools-modules
  sed: can't read /usr/src/packages/SOURCES/VMwareTools-modules.spec: No such file or directory
  Finding  Supplements: /usr/lib/rpm/find-supplements VMwareTools-modules
  Requires(rpmlib): rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1 rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1
  Requires: VMwareTools = 6532-44356 kernel = 2.6.18.2-34
  Checking for unpackaged file(s): /usr/lib/rpm/check-files /var/tmp/VMwareTools-modules-1.1-%{vmwaretoosl_version}-build
  Wrote: /media/install/schlomo10.2/i586/VMwareTools-modules-1.1_6532.44356_2.6.18.2_34-0.i586.rpm
  Executing(--clean): /bin/sh -e /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.23179
  + umask 022
  + cd /usr/src/packages/BUILD
  + rm -rf VMwareTools-modules-1.1
  + exit 0
  

  Note the location of the resulting RPM (in this example: /media/install/schlomo10.2/i586) and copy it to your RPM repository and install it here
• On all other systems you need only to install this RPM package, no compilations required !
• Now you can configure the VMware Tools with vmware-config-tools.pl -p

Feel free to send me your packages to put them up here on this page.

Downloads

send feedback to webmaster @ schapiro . org
last modified 2007-09-06 06:32:51

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