What's in the Release Notes

The release notes cover the following topics:

What's New
Before You Begin
Internationalization
Compatibility
Installation and Upgrades for This Release
Product Support Notices
Known Issues

What's New

VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtual machine's guest operating system and improves management of the virtual machine. Read about the new and enhanced features in this release below:

Common versioning: Infrastructure changes to enable reporting of true versions for VMware Tools Operating System Specific Packages. These changes will depend on host support.
Common Agent Framework: Common Agent Framework (CAF) provides the basic services necessary to simplify secure and efficient management of agents inside the guest virtual machines.
Quiesced snapshots enhancements on Linux: Robustness related enhancements in quiesced snapshot operation. vmtoolsd service supports caching of log messages when guest I/O has been quiesced. Enhancements in vmbackup plug in to use a separate thread to quiesce the guest operating system to avoid timeout issues due to heavy I/O in the guest.
Shared folders: For Linux distributions with kernel version 4.0.0 and higher, there is a new FUSE based Shared Folders client which is used as a replacement for the kernel mode client.
ESXi serviceability: Default vmtoolsd logging is directed to a file instead of Syslog or Event Viewer. Enhanced VMwareToolboxCmd.exe on Windows and vmware-toolbox-cmd on Linux to change vmtoolsd logging levels.
GuestInfo enhancements: Plug in enhancements to report more than 64 IP addresses from the guest. These enhancements will depend on host support.
TLS Support: VMware Tools 10.0.0 supports SSLv3, TLSv1, TLSv1.1 and TLSv1.2.
OpenSSL: OpenSSL is updated to version 1.0.1p.

Before You Begin

Important note about upgrading to ESXi 5.5 Update 3b or later

For resolution on incompatibility and general guidelines while upgrading ESXi hosts to ESXi 5.5 Update 3b or ESXi 6.0 Update 1 or later, while using older versions of Horizon View Agent, please refer to the knowledge base articles below:

Connecting to View desktops with Horizon View Agent 5.3.5 or earlier hosted on ESXi 5.5 Update 3b or later fails with a black screen.
Connecting to View desktops with Horizon View agent 6.0.x or 6.1.x hosted on ESXi 5.5 Update 3b or later fails with a black screen.
Connecting to View desktops with Horizon View Agent 6.1.x hosted on ESXi 6.0 Update 1 or later fails with a black screen.

Internationalization

VMware Tools 10.0.0 is available in the following languages:

English
French
German
Spanish
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese

Compatibility

VMware Tools 10.0.0 is compatible with supported versions of VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0 and later, VMware Workstation 12.0 and VMware Fusion 8.0. See VMware Compatibility Guide for more information.

Guest Operating System Customization Support

The Guest OS Customization Support Matrix provides details about the guest operating systems supported for customization.

Installation and upgrades for this release

VMware Tools can be downloaded from the Product Download page.

VMware Tools Operating System Specific Packages can be downloaded from http://packages.vmware.com/tools/releases/index.html .

The steps to install VMware Tools vary depending on your VMware product and the guest operating system you have installed. For general steps to install VMware Tools in most VMware products, see General VMware Tools installation instructions (1014294) or the Installing and Configuring VMware Tools Guide.

For specific instructions to install, upgrade, and configure VMware Tools, see VMware Documentation page.

Product Support Notices

VMware Tools 10.0.0 enables support for DirectX 10.0 and OpenGL 3.3 on Windows guests when used with VMware Workstation 12.0, VMware Fusion 8.0 and a future release of VMware vSphere where the virtual device supports the required feature.

Known Issues

The known issues are as follows:

Attempting to connect to the View desktop results in a black screen
While upgrading VMware vSphere to version 6.0 Update 1, VMware Tools to the latest version for View desktops, and installing the older View Agent, you might see an error similar to the following in the View agent PCOIP logs located at DriveLetter:\ProgramData\VMware\VDM\logs
LVL:0 RC:0 IMG_FRONTEND :Calling open display in Tera2 mode. LVL:0 RC:0 IMG_FRONTEND :configure_displays: 1 display(s) initially reported! LVL:2 RC:0 IMG_FRONTEND :configure_displays: (1) single display[0]: pos:(0, 0) w: 1024, h: 768, bpp: 32 LVL:0 RC:0 IMG_FRONTEND :configure_display[0]--* id: 48 mon_id: 0 pos: (0,0) w: 1024 h: 768 LVL:0 RC:0 IMG_FRONTEND :configure_display[0]--bpp: 32 --pitch: 4096 --map size: 1552 --fb size: 3145728 LVL:0 RC:0 IMG_FRONTEND :configure_display[0]--rot: 0 --pre-rot pitch: 4096 --frontend motion is enabled LVL:0 RC:0 EXTERN :svga_devtap ==> second render failed: 0xc0000008 LVL:0 RC:0 EXTERN :svga_devtap ==> Error: screen dma failed LVL:0 RC:0 IMG_FRONTEND :flip_frame_buffer: General flip error [1 results for 1 displays]: [4001, 0] LVL:0 RC:-500 IMG_FRONTEND :open_displays(): Flip error in open display first flip.

This issue occurs because the video driver installed with VMware Tools is incompatible with older versions of the View Agent.

Workaround: To workaround this issue, follow one of these recommendations as appropriate.

It is not recommended to install VMware Tools 10.0.0 or later for users using an version older than Horizon View Agent version 6.2
Install the latest version of Horizon View Agent 6.2. Alternatively, if the View Agent 6.2 cannot be installed, remove the existing agent and tools, install an older version of VMware Tools followed by the required View Agent

Installing VMware Tools on OS X 10.10 fails
Installing VMware Tools on OS X 10.10 fails with an error similar to the following:

“The installation failed”

The status of IPv6 address is displayed as "unknown"
The status of IPv6 address from vim-cmd is displayed as "unknown" even when the address is valid.

Workaround: None.

Copying and pasting text between host and guest systems fail
Copy and paste of text between host and guest systems fail if the text size is 50KB or higher.

Workaround: Copy and paste smaller amount of text.

Installing VMware Tools on Windows 2000 Professional SP4 fails with an error
While installing ThinPrint drivers on Windows 2000 Professional SP4 with VMware Tools 10.0.0 fails with an error prompt.

Workaround: To workaround this issue, follow one of these recommendations as appropriate.

For users who have installed ThinPrint, it is recommended not to update VMware Tools to version 10.0.0.
For users who have not installed ThinPrint, it is recommended not to install ThinPrint with VMware Tools 10.0.0.

Using clobber option while installing VMware Tools on Linux guests might fail
Using clobber option while installing VMware Tools on Linux guests might fail while booting the virtual machine.

Workaround: To workaround this issue, use upstream drivers delivered by Linux kernel.

Definition of the field ipAddress in guestinfo is ambiguous
The field ipAddress is defined as "Primary IP address assigned to the guest operating system, if known".

Workaround: The field ipAddress in this context for Linux is defined as the first IP address fetched by VMware Tools.

Reinstall VMware Tools is disabled in VMware Fusion after installing guest operating system
In VMware Fusion, menu option Reinstall VMware Tools is disabled after the installing Windows XP SP3 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 guest operating system.

Note: This problem might appear only on some of the hosts and not all the hosts.

Workaround: To workaround this issue, shutdown and restart the virtual machine.

After installing VMware Tools 10.0.0 on a FreeBSD 10.x virtual machine, the guest might not shut down properly when performed from the Workstation Pro or Fusion interface
When you install VMware Tools 10.0.0 on a FreeBSD 10.x virtual machine, the VMware Tools service, vmtoolsd, might not launch. vmtoolsd runs in the background and is responsible for a variety of operations. A symptom you might encounter is that the guest operating system might not shutdown as intended when performed from the Workstation Pro or Fusion interface. For example, the first attempt to shutdown the guest might fail while the second attempt from the interface is converted into a virtual machine power off operation instead of a graceful shutdown.

Workaround: Use the VMware Tools version included with a previous version of Workstation Pro or Fusion.