After upgrading VMware Tools on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual machine, VMXNET, VMXNET3 and Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) drivers are not upgraded

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor
• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

After you upgrade VMware Tools on a Linux virtual machine, the new versions of VMXNET, VMXNET3 and PVSCSI drivers are not loaded in the guest operating system. The issue appears in the following products:

• vSphere 5.0 or later
• VMware Workstation 6.5 or later
• VMware Fusion 2 or later
• VMware Player 2.5 or later

Environment

VMware Workstation 9.x (Linux)
VMware Player 5.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation Pro 14.x (for Windows)
VMware Workstation 11.x (for Windows)
VMware Player 3.x (Linux)
VMware Fusion 7.x
VMware Workstation 10.x (Linux)
VMware Player Pro 7.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 9.x (Windows)
VMware Player 4.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 8.x (Windows)
VMware Fusion 3.x
VMware Fusion 2.x
VMware Fusion 4.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware Workstation Player 14.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 8.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 6.x (Windows)
VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x
VMware Workstation Player 14.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation Pro 14.x (for Linux)
VMware Player 2.x (Linux)
VMware Workstation 10.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation 6.x (Linux)
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware Workstation 7.x (Windows)
VMware Player 6.x (Windows)
VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x
VMware Fusion 5.x
VMware Player 6.x (Linux)
VMware Player 7.x (Windows)
VMware Workstation 11.x (for Linux)
VMware Fusion 10.x
VMware Workstation 7.x (Linux)
VMware Player 7.x (Linux)
VMware Player Pro 7.x (Windows)

Resolution

To resolve this issue, directly restart the virtual machine. If the virtual machine is in a production environment and its restart is not appropriate, you can reload the VMXNET and VMXNET3 driver modules in the Linux kernel.

Warning: To perform the steps solving this issue, attach to the remote console of the virtual machine by using the vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client. If you run the commands through an SSH connection, you may lock yourself out of the virtual machine.

Minimize virtual machine restarts or manual driver reloads

To minimize the number of virtual machine restarts, on each virtual machine check whether both the modules are actually configured and the corresponding virtual hardware is present. If these conditions are satisfied, you must restart the virtual machine.

• To check whether the VMXNET, VMXNET3, and PVSCSI modules are configured by VMware Tools, run the following commands from the virtual machine console:

  grep VMXNET_CONFED /etc/vmware-tools/locations | tail -1
grep VMXNET3_CONFED /etc/vmware-tools/locations | tail -1
grep PVSCSI_CONFED /etc/vmware-tools/locations | tail -1

  If the output contains yes for the adapter type, VMware Tools has configured the module.

• To check whether the virtual hardware is available, from the virtual machine console run the lspci -n command and examine the output for the following IDs:

  15ad:0720 for VMXNET
  15ad:07b0 for VMXNET3
  15ad:07c0 for PVSCSI

You must restart the virtual machine or reload the driver module if the output of the grep driver_CONFED /etc/vmware-tools/locations command contains yes and the output of the lscpi -n command shows that the corresponding virtual hardware is available.

To see information about the adapter driver including its version, run the ethtool -i ethX command on the virtual machine, where X in ethX stands for the sequence number of the network adapter in the virtual machine.

Reload the VMXNET or VMXNET3 driver manually

To reload the VMXNET or VMXNET3 driver propagating its upgrade to the kernel, perform the following steps from the virtual machine console:

1. Stop virtual machine networking.

   /etc/init.d/network stop 

2. Reload the driver module by running rmmod and modprobe. For example, for the VMXNET3 driver run the following commands:

   rmmod vmxnet3
modprobe vmxnet3

3. Start virtual machine networking.

   /etc/init.d/network start