VMware Tools init script is missing from the /etc/init.d directory on Linux virtual machines

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

After VMware Tools is installed on virtual machines running recent Linux distributions, such as RedHat Enterprise Linux 6 and Ubuntu 6.1 & higher version, the following symptoms may appear:

• VMware Tools installed on some Linux virtual machines does not have an init script in the /etc/init.d directory.
• VMware Tools cannot stop or restart.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

This issue occurs because the /sbin/init program (init) from the sysvinit package has been replaced with Upstart in recent Linux distributions.

For more information on Upstart, refer to the RedHat Customer Portal.

Resolution

Depending on how VMware Tools was installed and configured on the system, the init script may be found in one of two locations.​

In one case, the /etc/init directory contains the configuration files. The vmware-tools script is in the /etc/init/vmware-tools.conf file. The command overview is in init(8) and the syntax is described in init(5).​

In the other case, the vmware-tools script is in /etc/init/vmware-tools-services.sh, which calls the script /etc/vmware-tools/init/vmware-tools-services​.

Workaround

To workaround this issue, manually start, stop, or restart VMware Tools with the commands:

/etc/vmware-tools/services.sh start

/etc/vmware-tools/services.sh stop

/etc/vmware-tools/services.sh restart

Open VMware Tools

/etc/init.d/open-vm-tools status

/etc/init.d/open-vm-tools stop

/etc/init.d/open-vm-tools restart

/etc/init.d/open-vm-tools start

Note: Optionally, run the commands from the vmware-tools.conf file if it is present on the system.​

To verify the status of VMware Tools, use the command:

status vmware-tools

 

Alternatively, add the below line to the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file to allow VMware-tools to start at boot time:

/etc/vmware-tools/services.sh start

 

Additional Information

Under RHEL6, vmware-tools is not supposed to use an init.d script to start, it should use Upstart initctl to start.

 

VMware Tools is configured to run using the kernel modules instead of the VMware provided modules. Running the below command to reconfigure will clobber the kernel module and use the VMware provided modules and will fix the issue with vmtoolsd not starting automatically.

To configure to use VMware provided modules:

vmware-config-tools.pl -d -p --clobber-kernel-modules='vmci,vsock,vmmemctl,vmxnet3,pcnet32,pvscsi'