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
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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

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

VMware support for open-vm-tools