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 VMware support for open-vm-tools 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
VMware vSphere ESXi

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.