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Updated on: 20 MAR 2019

VMware Tools | 23 FEB 2017 | Build 5055683

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 support for guest Operating Systems in 10.1.5
    • 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.
  • Drivers and Certifications: Signed Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) 8.15.1.50 graphics driver for VMware Tools 10.1.5. For more information on drivers, see Windows guest drivers installed by VMware Tools
  • TLS Support: VMware Tools 10.1.5 supports TLSv1.2.
  • Resolved Issues: This release of VMware Tools 10.1.5 addresses issues that have been documented in the Resolved Issues section.

Earlier Releases of VMware Tools

VMware Tools 10.1.0 Release Notes

For earlier releases of VMware Tools 10.0.0, see the VMware Tools Documentation page.

Before You Begin

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

VMware Tools for Windows are available for download in 32-bit and 64-bit installer executable (.exe) files. These files are provided for easier access and installation of VMware Tools in Windows guest operating systems.

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

For the 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 10.1.5 is available in the following languages:

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

Compatibility

VMware Tools 10.1.5 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 10.1.5 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.

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 is 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 the productLocker to point to the shared datastore, see KB 2004018.

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

Upgrade Information

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.

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.

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.

Windows guest drivers installed by VMware Tools

VMware Tools 10.1.5 support the following driver versions on a Windows Guest Operating System.

    Hardware drivers
    Drivers
    Version
    vmci 9.8.6.0
    vsock 9.8.8.0
    pvscsi 1.3.8.0
    wddm 8.15.1.50
    xpdm 12.1.8.0
    vmxnet3 1.7.3.2
    vmxnet2 2.2.0.0
    vmmouse 12.5.7.0
    vmusbmouse 12.5.7.0
    vmaudio 5.10.0.3506

    Software drivers
    Drivers
    Version
    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 1.0.2j.
  • The Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) configuration for VMware Tools service is lost after upgrading VMware Tools.
    The customized PAM configuration in /etv/pam.d/vmtoolsd is lost after upgrading VMware Tools, which results in authentication failures.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • VMware Tools installation and upgrade fails on CentOS and Oracle Linux virtual machines.
    VMware Tools installation and upgrade fails on CentOS and Oracle Linux virtual machines. On ESXi hosts older than version 6.5 which does not support virtual hardware version 13, all CentOS, and Oracle Linux virtual machines have one guestOS designation. For VMware Tools 10.1.0, CentOS and Oracle Linux guests are limited to a build that uses glibc version earlier than 2.5.

    This issue occurs because the linuxPreGlibc25.iso is not part of the standard ESXi installation. Automatic mounting of the VMware Tools ISO for installation by vCenter Server or vSphere Update Manager might fail with an error similar to the following:

    An error occurred while trying to access image file "/usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/linuxPreGlibc25.iso"

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • Authentication failure is reported as unknown general system error.
    Attempts to authenticate through VGAuth service might result in an authentication-specific error such as an expired account or password. The authentication-specific error might then be incorrectly reported as an unknown general system error, similar to the following:

    CommunicationException: Failed to create temp file on target <IP_ADDRESS>: A general system error occurred: Unknown error

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • Linux virtual machines with old kernel version fail with a VMXNET3 driver.
    RHEL 5 virtual machines with kernel version 2.6.18 might display kernel panic messages, when it is connected to a trunk portgroup and guest VLAN is not configured in the virtual machine.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • Unable to backup virtual machines with active docker containers.
    Attempts to take quiesced snapshots may fail on RHEL 7 guest operating systems that are running docker containers. Docker version 1.12.x and later create special mount points for containers. These mount points are recorded as 'net:[NUMBER]' instead of absolute paths in /proc/self/mounts on the system.

    Note: To see the issue tracked by Red Hat, see Red Hat Bugzilla.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

Known Issues

  • VMware Tools installer fails with an error in a FreeBSD 11.0 virtual machine
    In a FreeBSD 11.0 virtual machine, VMware Tools installer fails with an error similar to the following
    'Unable to start services for VMware Tools'
    The installer shows Guest memory manager and Blocking file system services fail to start at the end of VMware Tools installation process.

    Workaround: Perform the following steps

    1. Install VMware Tools without -d option. 
    2. Answer "No" to "Do you want this program to invoke the command for you now?" to invoke /usr/local/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl
    3. Before running VMware Tools for the first time, you need to configure by invoking the following command:
      "/usr/local/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl"
    4. Run the configuration script
      /usr/local/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl --skip-stop-start
    5. Run the command
      echo "answer VMMEMCTL_CONFED no" >> /etc/vmware-tools/locations
    6. Start VMware Tools
      /usr/local/etc/rc.d/vmware-tools.sh start

Known Issues from Earlier Releases

To view a list of known issues applicable from earlier releases, click here.

  • 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 TLSv1.2 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

     

Collapse List of Earlier Known Issues

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