Determining if your VMware Tools ISO image is corrupt on an ESX/ESXi host

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article assists you in determining if the VMware Tools ISO image is corrupt. A corrupted ISO can cause installation failures on your guest operating system. Ensuring your ISO is valid, is key to a successful installation.

Environment

VMware ESX Server 3.0.x
VMware ESX Server 2.5.x
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESX Server 2.1.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware ESX Server 3.5.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware ESX Server 2.0.x
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Embedded

Resolution

To determine if a VMware Tools ISO image is corrupt:

1. Connect to the ESX/ESXi host using an SSH client. For more information, see Enabling root SSH login on an ESX host (8375637) or Using Tech Support Mode in ESXi 4.1 (1017910)
2. Log in as a user that has root priviledges.
3. Change directory to /vmimages/tools-isoimages for VMware ESX/ESXi 3.5.x and above hosts. For older versions of ESX, change the directory to /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages .
4. Type md5sum xxx.iso and press Enter.
   
   Where xxx is the name of the ISO image.
   
   
5. Record the output for md5sum.

Follow the above procedure from Step 1 and connect to a different ESX/ESXi host of the same version where the VMware Tools are working fine and compare the md5sum output. If the output is different, the file is corrupt.

Note: If the ISO image is corrupt, copy the image from a working ESX/ESXi host to the location for VMware Tools. In the event all ISO packages are corrupt on all host, you will have to download the VMware tools packages for various ESX/ESXi manually, see: VMware Operating System Specific Packages

Additional Information

For translated versions of this article, see:

• 日本語: ESX/ESXi ホスト上の VMware Tools の ISO イメージが壊れているかどうかを判別する (2083485)
  
• 简体中文: 确定 ESX/ESXi 主机上的 VMware Tools ISO 映像是否损坏 (2086590)