Updating VMware Tools operating system specific package fails with dependency errors and driver issues on RHEL 6 and CentOS 6

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Updating VMware Tools operating system specific packages (OSPs) via yum update in RHEL 5.x and 6.0 fail with unresolved dependency errors.
• The kdump crash recovery service on RHEL 6 virtual machines with a Paravirtual SCSI controller fails to start when using OSP drivers in place of inbox drivers.

Environment

VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable

Cause

• The RHEL 5.x kernel modules do not have the VMware Tools version in their version number. RHEL kernel modules hold dependencies on the particular version of VMware Tools which they were built. One RHEL kernel requires VMware Tools 8.6.0, and the other RHEL kernel requires VMware Tools version 8.6.5.
  
  
• The yum utility sees that it already has the most up-to-date version of the kmod-* package installed and determines that it is not necessary to upgrade to the newer version with the same name. However, the installed kmod-* package requires the old VMware Tools version, and causes a conflict.
  
  VMware renames the modules in the OSPs when there is also an upstream version, and this also occurs with the vmmemctl package. When you specifically install the VMware version, the inbox driver version is hidden by the rename so that the VMware version is installed and not the inbox driver version.

Notes:

• VMware does not recommend using the pvscsi driver from the OSPs for RHEL 6.
• VMware does not ship pvscsi, vmxnet3, and vmmemctl for distributions that have kernel version 3.0 or later.
• The vmware-tools-esx-kmods meta package for RHEL 6 does not depend on the corresponding kernel module OSPs and are not installed by default.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, upgrade the RHEL 5.x operating system to a newer version.

To work around the unresolved dependency error issue:

• RHEL 5.0: There is no workaround for this version.
  
  
• RHEL 5.1: The yum-kmods package was introduced in RHEL 5.1, which handles the kmod-* dependency correctly. Install the yum-kmods package by running the yum install yum-kmods command, then run the yum update again.
  
  
• RHEL 6.0: RHEL 6.0 was released with yum version 3.2.17-14, which has a bug that prevents it from upgrading properly. Update yum to version 3.2.29-17 or later to resolve this issue. Upates are available for RHEL 6.0 from the Red Hat Network.
  
  Note: For more information on this issue, see Red Hat bug 719200.
  
  The preceding link was correct as of June 5, 2013. If you find the link is broken, provide feedback and a VMware employee will update the link.
  
  
• RHEL 6.1 and later: RHEL 6.1 and later have a recent version of yum and will upgrade successfully.

To work around the kdump crash recovery service issue:

• Remove the kmod-vmware-tools-pvscsi and vmware-tools-pvscsi-common packages before performing an OSP upgrade to an RHEL 5.x virtual machine.

Additional Information

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