Installing VMware tools on a virtual machine that supports open-vm-tools

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

When you install VMware Tools on a virtual machine that does not have VMware Tools or open-vm-tools installed, the install script detects whether the OS supports open-vm-tools . open-vm-tools is available for these operating systems:

• Fedora 19 and later releases
• Debian 7.x and later releases
• openSUSE 12.2 and later releases
• Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and 14.04 and later
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 and later releases
• SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 and later releases
• CentOS 7 and later releases
• Oracle Linux 7 and later releases

When you attempt to install open-vm-tools, you see the prompt:

open-vm-tools are available from the OS vendor and VMware recommends using open-vm-tools. See http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2073803 for more information.
Do you still want to proceed with this legacy installer?

The default answer is no. If you attempt to perform a silent install and run the installer with –d or --default options, VMware Tools is not installed.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 6.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0

Resolution

To change the default answer to yes, run the installer with the –f or --force-install option. This option lets you perform a silent install of VMware Tools when you use –d or --default option.

Note: If open-vm-tools is already installed, –f or --force-install option does not change the installer behavior and it only installs the missing components.