VMware Tools upgrade or installation stuck "In progress" due to /tmp noexec mount

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Automated or manual upgrade, installation of VMware Tools on a Linux guest will fail to progress due to security hardening performed on the /tmp directory which the install script requires.
• In the vmware.log for the VM shows a successful upgrade,
  
  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.XXXZ| vmx| I120: TOOLS INSTALL Attempting auto-upgrade.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.XXXZ| vmx| I120: TOOLS installed legacy version 9226, available legacy version 9360
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.XXXZ| vmx| I120: TOOLS manifest update status is 2
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.XXXZ| vmx| I120: TOOLS can be autoupgraded.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.XXXZ| vmx| I120: TOOLS INSTALL Launching auto-upgrader with args "".
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.XXXZ| vmx| I120: TOOLS INSTALL autoupgrading old tools.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.XXXZ| vmx| I120: ToolsISO: Selected Tools ISO 'linux.iso' for 'rhel6-64' guest.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.XXXZ| vmx| I120: TOOLS INSTALL Copying upgrader files from /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/linux.iso into guest at /tmp/vmware-root/
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.XXXZ| vcpu-6| I120: HGFileCopyCreateSessionCB: Successfully created the session.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.XXXZ| vcpu-6| I120: HGFileCopyCreateSessionCB: Successfully created the session.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.XXXZ| vcpu-6| I120: HGFileCopyCreateSessionCB: Successfully created the session.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.XXXZ| vcpu-6| I120: TOOLS INSTALL finished copying upgrader binary into guest. Starting Upgrader in guest.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.XXXZ| vcpu-6| I120: TOOLS INSTALL entering INSERTED state.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.XXXZ| vcpu-6| I120: TOOLS INSTALL Sending "upgrader.create 1"
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.XXXZ| vcpu-0| I120: TOOLS INSTALL completed Foundry upgrade.
   
• Attempting to manually launch the upgrade from the guest OS fails.
  
  # /usr/bin/vmware-toolbox-cmd upgrade start
  
  Note: The host does not support auto upgrade of VMware Tools.
   
• Mounting the tools ISO manually, extracting the tar.gz file to /tmp, & running the vmware-install.pl script manually also fails.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 5.5.x
VMware vSphere Client 5.5
VMware Update Manager 5.5
VMware vCenter Server 5.5.x

Vmware vSphere 7.x 

 

Resolution

This issue is resolved in VMware tools 10.1.10.  See the VMware Tools 10.1.10 release notes for more details.

Workaround:

To workaround this issue,

Workaround 1:

This is due to a common security fix that involves locking out the execute permissions on the /tmp mount, in /etc/fstab you will see no exec as a mount option in the 3rd column. This is easily circumvented by remounting /tmp, then run the automatic VMware Tools upgrade normally.

# mount -o remount,exec /tmp

Workaround 2:

Run a manual VMware Tools upgrade, manually mount the ISO, extract the tar.gz file to /opt or another mount point, & run the vmware-install.pl script.

# mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom (if not auto mounted)
# tar xzvf /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-x.x.x-xxxx.tar.gz -C /opt/
# /opt/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl