Dear All, I would like to ask you about few things. First of all I need to admit, that I'm not a profesionalist when talking about linux systems. I have some experience gathered for over ten years, but I have never used linux as main OS for our servers. On VMware community I have participate in series of thread about installing VMware Tools in supported/unsupported linux distributions. Unfortunately VMware cannot give us offical statements about VMware Tools.
I am working with VMware software already for some time [walked throught VMware Player, VMware Server 2.0, Workstation 6.5, 7, 8 (using it all the time), ESX3.5, 4.0, i4.1 (using it all the time)]. We are using Debian distribution for our NAT/Compression purposes. For each of VMware products I spotted that different versions of VMware tools are installed. I think that it is normal but case is more complicated if we are dealing with for example Debian 6.0 on ESX3.5, 4.0, i4.1 - this version of Debian is officialy unsupported. Of course it is working, even without VMware Tools. Debian 6.0 Squeeze as minimal installation is failproof in my opinion. Problem accurs when trying to install VMware Tools on it. In fact the installation is ended with success, but compiling additional modules generates problems. On ESX3.5 with Debian 6.0 virtual machine (VM) on it, first thing we can meet while installing VMware Tools is lack of few needed packages. I made lot of tests, installed Debian 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 thousand times and right now I know that in order to install VMware tools on it (Debian 6.0) I need: linux-headers-`uname -r`, gcc-4.3, psmisc (for killall binary), binutils, make. Also there is possibility to create symlink ln –sf /usr/bin/gcc-4.3 /usr/bin/gcc in order to skip entering path to /usr/bin/gcc-4.3 after invoking ./vmware-config.pl. Strange situation occurs when we trying to install VMware Tools on Debian 6.0 in Workstation 8. While trying to enter path to /usr/bin/gcc-4.3 after invoking ./vmware-config.pl even if we enter it, VMware Tools cannot find gcc under that path. In order to do that we need to install aditional package named libglib2.0. Funny thing is that, we don't have to do this on ESX3.5 (installing libglib2.0) and also, we are ABLE to enter this /usb/bin/gcc-4.3 path. Both situations can be reconstructed each time on minimal Debian 6.0 installation (system is installed from official netinstal .iso). After we install VMware Tools on Debian 6.0 Squeeze on ESXi4.1 (without any problems), when starting VM, we can see errors about UDEV. I have found lot of solutions for this problem but even that could you tell me how is possible that VMware Tools are changing something in system and invoking problem with UDEV? What I would like to ask: - What are in fact VMware Tools? - Why versions and build of VMware Tools is changed in every version of VMware products? (There is other version for VMware Player, Workstation, ESX3.5, 4.0 etc.). - Are the tools compatibility backward? (Can I install VMware tools from ESX5.0 for Debian 6.0 on ESX3.5?) - I have read on open-vm-tools.sourceforge.net that stable version of open-vm-tools are based on Workstation 7 - Does it means basics "engine" functionality of VMware Tools is independent of guest system/ESX/Player/Workstation/Etc.? - What VMware is changing in their tools on each new version of tools? (Is the new functionallity added to new version but tools are still compatible backward?) - What kind of packages are need to install VMware Tools/vm-open-tools (have you checked dependies)? - What are differences between VMware Tools and vm-open tools? I haven't found answers for that questions. As you are developers of vm-open-tools, I would be glad to ask people who know what are doing. I have opportunity to test vm-open-tools on our virtual environments but first I would like to know theory and your opinion. Many thanks in advance for answering and apologize for my lack of english language skills. Best regards, Peter P. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Virtualization & Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/ _______________________________________________ open-vm-tools-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/open-vm-tools-discuss
