vSphere Client displays the VMTools version as 2147483647 for FreeBSD open-vm-tools

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article explain the MAXINT version number displayed by the vSphere Client for FreeBSD open-vm-tools.

Symptoms:
vSphere Client displays the VMTools version as 2147483647 for FreeBSD open-vm-tools.

vSphere Web Client VMware Tools information displayed for open-vm-tools 10.1.0
------------------------
Running, version: 2147483647 (Guest Managed)

More info displays:
------------------------
   Version: 2147483647
   Version Status: Guest Managed
                       A VMware Tools implementation is installed on the
                       guest operating system, but it is not managed by
                       VMware. The VMware Tools status is unknown.
   Installation Type: guestToolsInstallType null

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1

Resolution

FreeBSD has updated their port of open-vmtools to version 10.1.x and open-vm-tools is the recommended source of VMware Tools for FreeBSD 11.0 and beyond. With the release of open-vm-tools 10.2.0, all supported FreeBSD OS releases, currently 10.x, 11.x and "current", are supported only by open-vm-tool packages provided from FreeBSD.

Without the availability of a FreeBSD VMCI/VSOCK drivers and the "secure" RPC channel that they provide, the open-vm-tools vmtoolsd daemon must continue to use the legacy API tools.set.verion to convey that the vmtools are guest managed and installed from open-vm-tools. It does this by passing the value 2147483647 as the version number.

This may be acceptable to FreeBSD users who have previously used an open-vm-tools release. It may be unacceptable to existing users of the FreeBSD VMware Tools release provided by VMware.

By adding or updating the tools configuration file at "/usr/local/share/vmware-tools/tools.conf" with the following entries:

[vmtools]
     disable-tools-version = false

The open-vm-tools version will be presented in a more user friendly form. This will display the version information in the same format seen by FreeBSD VMware Tools customers.

vSphere Web Client display With the work-around:
------------------------
   Running, version 10272 (Current)

More info displays:
------------------------
   Version: 10272 (10.1.0)
   Version Status: Current
                  VMware Tools is installed and the version is current
   Installation Type: guestToolsInstallType null

Additional Information

中文简体：对于 FreeBSD open-vm-tools，vSphere Client 将 VMTools 版本显示为 2147483647