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Updated on: 20 MAR 2019

VMware Tools | 25 OCT 2016 | Build 4449150

Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

What's in the Release Notes

The release notes cover the following topics:

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.

  • VMware Tools Lifecycle Management: VMware Tools 10.1.0 is a major release with several enhancements. This release adds simplified and scalable approach for install and upgrade of VMware Tools, reboot less upgrade for newer Linux distributions, support for OSP upgrades, enhanced version using UI, and status reporting using API and UI. This version includes several feature enhancements, driver-related enhancements, and support for newer guest operating systems. VMware Tools 10.1.0 caters to the current guest operating systems. VMware Tools 10.0.12 caters to the legacy guest operating systems.

  • VMware Tools support for guest Operating Systems in 10.1.0
    • windows.iso supports Windows Vista and later.
    • linux.iso supports Linux guest operating systems Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 and later, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 and later, Ubuntu 10.04 and later. It also supports other distributions with glibc versions 2.5 and later.
    • darwin.iso supports Mac OS X versions 10.11 and later.
    • freebsd.iso supports FreeBSD versions.
    • solaris.iso supports Solaris versions.

  • Rebootless upgrade for newer Linux distributions : With the current version of VMware Tools, major number of Linux guest operating systems do not have to be rebooted after upgrade.
    Note: For earlier Linux distributions where the PVSCI, VMXNET or VMXNET3 drivers are updated, the guest operating systems must be rebooted after upgrade.

  • Customer Experience Improvement Program: The Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) provides VMware with information that enables VMware to improve the VMware products and services and to fix problems. When you choose to participate in CEIP, VMware collects technical information about your use of the VMware products and services in CEIP reports on a regular basis. This information does not personally identify you. For more details, see the vSphere Documentation Center.

  • VGAuth guest operating system authentication: VGAuth provides guest operating system authentication using different authentication mechanisms. Critical issues have been fixed in this version of VMware Tools 10.1.0.

  • TLS Support: VMware Tools 10.1.0 supports TLSv1.2.

  • Resolved Issues: This release of VMware Tools 10.1.0 addresses issues that have been documented in the Resolved Issues section.

Before You Begin

In earlier versions, VMware Tools ISO images are shipped with the ESXi image. ISO images for a few end of life guest operating systems are frozen. Frozen ISO images are available for download from http://my.vmware.com. These ISO images are not shipped with ESXi in the tools-light VIB. For more details, see VMware Tools Documentation page.

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, using older versions of Horizon View Agent, refer to the knowledge base articles:

Internationalization

VMware Tools 10.1.0 is available in the following languages:

  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Spanish
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Simplified Chinese
  • Traditional Chinese

Compatibility

VMware Tools 10.1.0 is compatible with supported versions of VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5 and later, VMware Workstation 12.0 and VMware Fusion 8.0. See VMware Compatibility Guide for more information.

VMware Tools 10.1.0 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 releases of VMware vSphere where the virtual device supports the required feature. The VMware guest operating system OpenGL driver for Windows and Linux supports the OpenGL 3.3 core profile only. The OpenGL3.3 compatibility profile is not supported. OpenGL guest driver only supports version 3.0 for compatibility profiles.

Common Agent Framework (CAF) is supported on 64-bit guest operating systems. It does not support 32-bit guest operating systems.

The VMware Tools installer option to clobber Linux kernel modules that are shipped with the operating system is deprecated. In the upcoming versions of VMware Tools for Linux the clobber option will be removed from the installer.

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. For more information on installing OSPs, see the VMware Tools Installation Guide for Operating System Specific Packages

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).To set up productLocker to point to shared datastore, see KB 2004018.

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

Upgrade Information

Support for ESXi 5.0 and ESXi 5.1 VMware Tools

  • Extended support - Extended support is available for VMware Tools versions shipped with ESXi 5.0 and ESXi 5.1
  • Upgrade - Upgrade of VMware Tools to version 10.0.12 for the legacy guest operating systems is not supported on ESXi 5.0 and ESXi 5.1. Virtual machines running VMware Tools 10.0.12 is supported on ESXi 5.0 and 5.1.

Note: VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch Release ESXi550-201608001 and VMware ESXi 6.0, Patch Release ESXi600-201608001 and later is required to install or upgrade VMware Tools 10.0.12 on the legacy guest operating systems.

Upgrade Impact

The upgrade support implies that users need to follow a two-step upgrade process to upgrade VMware Tools prior to 9.4.x to versions later than 10.1.0 on non-legacy guest operating systems.

  1. VMware Tools prior to 9.4.x must be first upgraded to VMware Tools version 10.1.0. As a second step, VMware Tools can be upgraded to a newer version later than 10.1.0.
  2. VMware Tools 9.4.x and newer can be directly upgraded to the latest available version of VMware Tools.

For mapping of VMware Tools versions that were bundled with ESXi, see http://packages.vmware.com/tools/versions.

For a simple upgrade, upgrade to VMware Tools bundled with the supported version of ESXi. 

VMware Tools is backward and forward compatible with ESXi. Newer versions of VMware Tools are compatible with older ESXi versions supported and conversely. Upgrade of VMware Tools to version 10.0.12 is the last supported upgrade for the legacy guest operating systems on VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch Release ESXi550-201608001, VMware ESXi 6.0, Patch Release ESXi600-201608001 and later.

Upgrade support for future releases of VMware Tools

Upgrade support is available for older versions of VMware Tools shipped with ESXi that have reached end of support to newer versions of VMware Tools shipped concurrently to the immediate ESXi version released at the time of end of support of the older ESXi releases.

Windows guest drivers installed by VMware Tools

The following driver versions are supported by VMware Tools 10.1.0 on a Windows Guest Operating System.

Drivers VMware Tools 10.1.0
Hardware Drivers
vmci

9.8.6.0
vsock

9.8.8.0
pvscsi

1.3.8.0
wddm

8.15.1.48
xpdm

12.1.8.0
vmxnet3

1.7.3.0 - NDIS 6.0

vmxnet2

2.2.0.0
vmmouse

12.5.7.0
vmusbmouse

12.5.7.0
vmaudio

5.10.0.3506
Software Drivers
vmrawdsk.sys

1.1.0.1
vmmemctl.sys

7.4.1.1
vmhgfs.sys

11.0.14.2 - For Operating systems Windows Vista and later
vsepflt.sys

10.1.0.0
vnetflt.sys

10.1.0.0 - For Kernel-Mode Code Signing
vnetWFP.sys

10.1.0.0

Resolved Issues

  • Update to OpenSSL.
    OpenSSL is updated to version 1.0.2h.
  • Windows virtual machine on a ESXi host with VMware Tools installed fails with a blue diagnostic screen and reports an error
    Windows virtual machine on a ESXi host with VMware Tools installed fails with a blue diagnostic screen and reports an error similar to the following:

    • PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA (50) Invalid system memory was referenced: vmmemctl.sys

    This issue occurs due to a high amount of memory allocation and deallocation processes running in the Windows guest operating system. This causes memory stress in the VMware server memory controller.

    This issue is resolved in this release..

  • VMware Tools fails to start after a Linux guest operating system kernel upgrade
    VMware Tools fail to run after you boot to a different Linux guest operating system kernel. This issue occurs due to incompatibility between VMware Tools kernel modules with the Linux kernel. The kernels need to be reinstalled.

    • This issue is resolved in this release. VMware automatic kernel modules is enabled by default on VMware Tools 10.1 and later.

  • VMware Tools 10.0.x fails to run on Ubuntu 16.10 guest operating system
    VMware Tools 10.0.x fails to run on Ubuntu 16.10 guest operating system when VMware Tools is installed using .tar package. This issue occurs while rebooting the guest operating system after installation.

    • This issue is resolved in this release.

  • Installation of VMware Tools on FreeBSD fails if the version of Perl is later than 5.20
    Installation of VMware Tools on FreeBSD fails if the version of Perl is later than 5.20 because the path to the Perl executable changed. It fails with an error similar to the following:

    ./vmware-install.pl: Command not found

    • This issue is resolved in this release.

  • Quiesced snapshot operation failure leaves the Linux guest file system in a quiesced state
    A quiesced snapshot operation on a Linux guest operating system might fail on the host after the guest file system is quiesced. Occurrence of this issue leaves the guest file system in the quiesced state even after completion of the snapshot operation with error returned to the client. Error log messages similar to the following are generated in the vmware.log file.

    • <TIMESTAMP>| vcpu-0| I120: ToolsBackup: changing quiesce state: COMMITTED -> ERROR_WAIT
    <TIMESTAMP>| vcpu-0| I120: Msg_Post: Warning
    <TIMESTAMP>| vcpu-0| I120: [msg.snapshot.quiesce.vmerr] The guest OS has reported an error during quiescing.
    <TIMESTAMP>| vcpu-0| I120+ The error code was: 4
    <TIMESTAMP>| vcpu-0| I120+ The error message was: Quiesce aborted.
    <TIMESTAMP>| vcpu-0| I120: ----------------------------------------
    <TIMESTAMP>| vcpu-0| I120: Vigor_MessageRevoke: message 'msg.snapshot.quiesce.vmerr' (seq 860282) is revoked
    <TIMESTAMP>| vcpu-0| I120: ToolsBackup: changing quiesce state: ERROR_WAIT -> ERROR_WAIT
    <TIMESTAMP>| vcpu-0| I120: ToolsBackup: changing quiesce state: ERROR_WAIT -> IDLE
    <TIMESTAMP>| vcpu-0| I120: ToolsBackup: changing quiesce state: IDLE -> DONE

    This issue is resolved in this release.

Known Issues

The following issues are known to occur in VMware Tools 10.1.0:

  • VMware Tools 10.1.0 is not compatible with VMware Site Recovery Manager 6.1.1 or earlier
    Upgrading VMware Tools to 10.1.0 on a virtual machine managed by VMware Site Recovery Manager 6.1.1 or earlier breaks the VMware Site Recovery Manager workflows. VMware Site Recovery Manager  6.1.2 and 6.5 versions are compatible with VMware Tools 10.1.0.

    Workaround: Upgrade VMware Site Recovery Manager to version 6.1.2 or 6.5 before installing or upgrading VMware Tools to version 10.1.0. If a virtual machine is being managed by VMware Site Recovery Manager 6.1.1 or earlier, avoid installing or upgrading VMware Tools to version 10.1.0. This compatibility requirement is also applicable to open-vm-tools 10.1.0 packaged by various Linux distributions. For more information on compatibility, see VMware Product Interoperability Matrix.
  • Attempts to install VMware Tools on a FreeBSD 6.x or 7.x guest operating system might fail with an error
    Attempts to install VMware Tools on a FreeBSD 6.x or 7.x guest operating system might fail with an error similar to the following:

    Guest operating system daemon: failed
    Attempting to run vmtoolsd after installation will result in the following error
    "Segmentation fault: 11 (core dumped)"

    Workaround: Before installing VMware Tools 10.1.0 on a FreeBSD 6.x or 7.x VM, perform the following
    1. Create the file, if it is not created
       
       /etc/libmap.conf
    2. Add the following to /etc/libmap.conf file

       [/usr/local/lib/vmware-tools/]
       libpthread.so.2 libthr.so.2
       libpthread.so libthr.so

    If VMware Tools 10.1.0 is already installed, perform the following
    1. Update /etc/libmap.conf with the following

       [/usr/local/lib/vmware-tools/]
       libpthread.so.2 libthr.so.2
       libpthread.so libthr.so
    2. Complete the configuration by running /usr/local/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl

    Note: This workaround is not applicable to virtual machines running FreeBSD versions later than 7.x.

  • Common Agent Framework in open-vm-tools fails to build in Ubuntu 14.04
    Common Agent Framework in open-vm-tools fails to build in Ubuntu 14.04 with rabbitmq-c version lower than 0.8.0

    Workaround: Upgrade rabbitmq-c to version 0.8.0 or later for TLS1.2 support in Common Agent Framework.
  • vmusr plug-ins do not load on Solaris 10 Update 11
    While VMware Tools 10.1 is running on Solaris 10 U11 guest operating systems, the following vmusr plug-ins are not loaded:
    • libdesktopEvents.so
    • libdndcp.so
    • libresolutionSet.so

    This issue might also occur in Solaris version 11.2.

    Workaround: Upgrade to Solaris 11.3.
  • With VMware Tools 10.0.x, duplicate drivers might be loaded in the Linux kernel
    This issue occurs when drivers are installed in /lib/modules/<kernel version>/ directly. This might lead to incorrect detection of drivers by VMware Tools which causes installation of unwanted drivers.

Workaround: To work around this issue, install the modules in the sub-directory of /lib/modules/<kernel version>/ / before installing or re-installing VMware Tools.

For example,
cd /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/
mkdir foobar
mv foo.ko bar.ko foobar/
depmod -a

 

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