You'd think that the file "/etc/modprobe.d/open-vm-tools.conf" really is gone.
Timeline: This is from debian/2%8.8.0+2012.05.21-724730-2 It moved from package open-vm-tools-dkms to open-vm-tools in debian/2%9.4.6-1770165-3 It was dropped in debian/2%10.0.0-3000743-1 Even oldstable already has 2:10.1.5-5055683-4+deb9u2 so this also is quite long ago. But in more detail, all that was about file /lib/modules-load.d/open-vm-tools.conf Being in /lib made it a non-conffile so it was removed correctly. The file you reported seems to never have existed in the packaging. I looked further and found that upstream once had such files created and added in their scripts and that way it might have slipped in. But all of that still was part of the dkms/module handling that is long gone. There were a bunch of other /etc/modprobe.d/vm* files, also all long gone. The only mention in upstream code for this is on their error-collection in `vm-support` - but not as a file deployed. I'm tempted to assume that "/etc/modprobe.d/open-vm-tools.conf" was from maybe a howto or a guid on the internet - or from a non-archive build of the tool? Again - I tried, but my analysis might be wrong. Do you happen to know exactly where this is from - maybe a package version that still contained this? -- Christian Ehrhardt Staff Engineer, Ubuntu Server Canonical Ltd
