What's in the Release Notes

The release notes cover the following topics:

What's New
Earlier Releases of VMware Tools
Before You Begin
Internationalization
Compatibility Notes
Installation and Upgrades for This Release
Resolved Issues

What's New

VMware Tools 10.2.1 supports the guest operating systems below:
- 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.
- solaris.iso supports Solaris versions.
Offline bundle with VMware Tools VIB: Offline bundles with VMware Tools VIB that can be installed on vSphere 5.5.x, 6.0.x and 6.5.x releases using vSphere Update Manager.
Improved lifecycle management of VMware Tools
- Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) to distribute and update VMware Tools: Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) is used to manage the deployment of Windows applications across an enterprise and can be used to deploy VMware Tools. For more information, see Deploying VMware Tools using SCCM.
FreeBSD support: freebsd.iso is not available for VMware Tools 10.2.0 and later as it has been discontinued in favor of open-vm-tools. For more information, see the Compatibility Notes section of this release notes.
Virtual Network Adapter filtering: The configuration option to exclude network interfaces from GuestInfo and set primary and low priority network interfaces is added to the tools.conf configuration file.
ASLR support: Address space layout randomization support for VMware Tools.
Resolved Issues: This release of VMware Tools disables VMware CAF Management Agent service by default. For more details, see the Resolved Issues section of this release notes.

Earlier Releases of VMware Tools

For earlier releases of VMware Tools, 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 is 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 10.2.1 is available in the following languages:

English
French
German
Spanish
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese

Compatibility Notes

VMware Tools 10.2.1 is compatible with supported versions of VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5 and later, VMware Workstation 14.0 and VMware Fusion 10.0. See VMware Compatibility Guide for more information.
The option to clobber Linux kernel modules that are included with the operating system using VMware Tools installer has been removed and no longer supported.
Starting with VMware Tools version 10.2.0, Perl script-based VMware Tools installation for FreeBSD has been discontinued. FreeBSD systems are supported only through the open-vm-tools packages directly available from FreeBSD package repositories. FreeBSD packages for open-vm-tools 10.1.0 and later are available from FreeBSD package repositories.

Guest Operating System Customization Support

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

Interoperability Matrix

The VMware Product Interoperability Matrix provides details about the compatibility of current and earlier versions of VMware Products. The VMware Product Interoperability Matrix of VMware Tools 10.2.0 can be applied to VMware Tools 10.2.1.

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 the shared datastore, see KB 2004018.

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

Note:

If you are using VMware Tools version earlier than 9.4, refer to VMware Tools 10.1.0 Release Notes for specific upgrade guidelines.

Windows guest Drivers Installed by VMware Tools

The following driver versions are supported by VMware Tools 10.2.1 on a Windows Guest Operating System.

Drivers	VMware Tools 10.2.1
Hardware Drivers
`vmci`	9.8.6.0
`vsock`	9.8.10.0
`pvscsi`	1.3.8.0
`wddm`	8.15.1.60
`xpdm`	12.1.8.0
`vmxnet3`	1.7.3.7
`vmxnet2`	2.2.0.0
`vmmouse`	12.5.7.0
`vmusbmouse`	12.5.7.0
`vmaudio`	5.10.0.3506
`efifw`	1.0.0.0 (Windows 8 and later)
`vmaudio`	5.10.0.3506
Software Drivers
`vmrawdsk.sys`	1.1.1.0
`vmmemctl.sys`	7.4.1.1
`vmhgfs.sys`	11.0.28.0
`vsepflt.sys`	10.2.0.0
`vnetflt.sys`	10.2.0.0
`vnetWFP.sys`	10.2.0.0

Resolved Issues

Network ports might get exhausted on a guest VM while using VMware Tools 10.2.0
Guest VM ports might get exhausted after a few days while using VMware Tools 10.2.0. It results in a network connection failure.

This issue is resolved in this release by disabling VMware CAF Management Agent service (ManagementAgentHost.exe) by default. Do not enable VMware CAF Management Agent service manually. For more details, see KB 54459.
Autofit Guest fails to function with VMware Tools 10.2.0.
Virtual machine autofit guest fails to function after installing VMware Tools 10.2.0. While VMware Workstation application window resizes, VM auto fit guest fails to function. This issue is observed in Windows 10 Insider Preview guest operating system.

This issue is resolved in this release.
Attempts to use the multi monitor mode or unity mode fails on a Windows 10 guest operating system.
Windows 10 guest operating system fails to switch to the multi monitor mode or unity mode. The vmware.log file contains error similar to the following:

... T| svga| I125: SVGA Driver Error: svgaPresentCmd.c:1287 UpdateGBScreenTarget ... T| vmx| I125: GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out. T| vmx| I125: GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox timed out. T| vmx| I125: GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out. T| vmx| I125: GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox-dnd timed out. T| vmx| W115: TOOLS unity.launchmenu.open failed: failure of the transport layer T| vmx| I125: GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox timed out.

This issue is resolved in this release.
After you log out and back in to a Windows 7 virtual machine that is running in full screen mode on multiple displays, the mouse pointer might not work properly.
In a Windows 7 virtual machine running in full screen mode on multiple displays, after you log out and back in, the mouse pointer might not position properly inside the virtual machine. When you click the right mouse button, the popup menu does not appear at the location expected, which is at the pointer. This issue only occurs in Windows 7 virtual machines.

This issue is resolved in this release.
Attempts to use multiple screens fail on the Windows 2012 and Windows 10 guest operating systems.
Attempts to use multiple screens fail on Windows 2012 and Windows 10 guest operating systems, after upgrading the host from Windows 8 to Windows 10. The selection and use of multiple screens is restricted until the OS is rebooted and the user is logged in to the guest operating system.

This issue is resolved in this release.
Windows Media Player is unable to play video files on Windows 10 Creators Update guest operating system.
An issue that resulted in the failure of Windows Media Player to play videos on Windows 10 Creator Update was resolved in this release.

This issue is resolved in this release.
Connecting to View fails with a black screen intermittently.
An issue that caused a black screen to appear while connecting to View with Horizon View Agent hosted on ESXi 6.5 is fixed in this release.

This issue is resolved in this release.
Windows virtual machine fails due to memory pressure.
An issue causing intermittent failure in Windows virtual machine is fixed in this release. This issue affected virtual machines under memory pressure performing display resolution modesetting.

This issue is resolved in this release.
Windows 10 guest operating system with multiple virtual CPUs fails while playing videos using Windows Media Player.
Playing video files using Windows Media Player on a Windows 10 virtual machine with multiple virtual CPUs causes the guest operating system to fail.

This issue is resolved in this release.
Partial black screen is displayed after setting multi-monitor resolution.
An issue affecting multi-monitor resolution set in Windows virtual machines with hardware version 8, hardware version 9, hardware version 10 is fixed in this release. This issue resulted in the intermittent display of a black screen after setting the resolution.

This issue is resolved in this release.
Windows virtual machine fails while setting large multi-monitor display modes.
An issue that caused a Windows virtual machine to fail while setting large multi-monitor display mode is fixed in this release.

This issue is resolved in this release
ReadEnvironmentVariableInGuest API returns the system variable in Windows virtual machine
If VMware Tools version 9.10 or higher is installed in Windows virtual machine, ReadEnvironmentVariableInGuest API returns the system variable irrespective of any user used by the NamePasswordAuthentication data object.
This issue is fixed in this release with a known limitation.

vSphere API ReadEnvironmentVariableInGuest returns specific environment variables for an authenticated user account when the user does not log in to Windows. For example,
TMP=C:\Users\ADMINI~1\AppData\Local\Temp TEMP=C:\Users\ADMINI~1\AppData\Local\Temp USERPROFILE=C:\Users\Administrator

vSphere API CreateRegistryKeyInGuest, ListRegistryKeysInGuest, and DeleteRegistryKeyInGuest work as expected with HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry root key of an authenticated user account when the user does not log in to Windows.

For an authenticated user who does not log in to Windows, vSphere API StartProgramInGuest runs an application in the user account with the user-specific environment block. It does not wait for the application to terminate before unloading the user profile and returning to the caller, making the application inaccessible to the user HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry root key at run-time.
Guest authentication fails with a SystemError fault when the requested password is expired.
Attempting to authenticate with an expired password, for example when attempting Guest Operations, fails with a SystemError fault.

This issue is resolved in this release. Authentication with an expired password now fails with an InvalidGuestLogin fault to provide accurate details of the error code.
The free space reported in vim.vm.GuestInfo.DiskInfo for a Linux guest does not match with the df command in the guest.
Prior to VMware Tools version 10.2.0, the free space reported in vim.vm.GuestInfo.DiskInfo for a Linux guest included file system-specific reserved blocks. This led to guest file system usage in vSphere clients reporting more free space than what was reported by df command in the guest. This issue has been resolved in this release by not including the file system-specific reserved blocks in the free space reported in vim.vm.GuestInfo.DiskInfo for Linux guests by default. The default behavior can be reversed with a configuration in /etc/vmware-tools/tools.conf file in the Linux guest operating systems:

[guestinfo] diskinfo-include-reserved=true
The guest file introspection kernel component might not run after upgrading VMware Tools.
While upgrading VMware Tools, an older guest file introspection kernel mode driver is stopped and removed before the new version is installed. If the existing driver ceases to stop, then the driver service key is marked for deletion on system restart. This occurs even after the new version is replaced while installation. During reboot, the key is deleted and the driver might not load or run.
This issue is fixed in this release.

Work around for older versions of VMware Tools:

Uninstall VMware Tools and reboot
Install newer version of VMware Tools and reboot

VMware user process might not restart after upgrades of open-vm-tools.
When the VMware user process receives a SIGUSR2, it restarts itself by running vmware-user and terminates itself. This process is used on upgrades to ensure that the latest version of vmtoolsd is running. vmware-user was not available in open-vm-tools.
This issue is fixed in this release.
Kernel modules were not upgraded after upgrading OSPs using the recommended procedure.
The package vmware-tools-esx-kmods is a meta package that depends on the kernel module package. Installing it with yum/apt/zypper gets the kmod packages. An upgrade of vmware-tools-esx-kmods might not automatically upgrade the kernel module packages because the dependency was not versioned.
This issue is fixed in this release.
In the Windows Creators Fall release (1709), saving modified files using Microsoft Office applications to a VMware shared folder can fail.
Attempts to save a Microsoft Office file after editing the file on a VMware shared folder in the Windows Creators Fall release (1709) VM might fail with an error similar to the following:There has been a network or file permission error. The network connection may be lost"

This issue might occur even when the network connection remains available and the drive is accessible.

The VMware Shared Folders client is updated to address this issue. The issue occurs due to the changes made in the newer releases of Windows 10 related to file rename operations. The new rename file operation is not handled by the VMware Shared Folder client.

For instance, in Microsoft Word, after you close the error dialog box, the application prompts you to save the file. If you select a local drive and save the modified file to that new location, you might not lose any changes to the file. The new modified file must be copied from that temporary location to the original location on the VMware shared folder drive to update the original file using applications such as File Explorer or xcopy.

This issue is resolved in this release.

Windows system backup fails when VMware Tools 10.1.x is installed
When a windows system state backup attempts to run with VMware Tools 10.1.x installed, you might see an error similar to the following:

Error in backup of C:\windows\\systemroot\ during enumerate:Error [0x8007007b] The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect

This issue is resolved in this release.

Known Issues

Ports are exhausted on a guest VM after using VMware Tools 10.2.0
Guest VM ports are exhausted after using VMware Tools 10.2.0. This results in network connection failure.

Workaround: For workaround, see KB 54459.
VMware Tools will not auto upgrade on power cycle of VM.
If the guest VMware Tools version is older than the host version of VMware Tools, vmware.log file displays a message similar to the following:
2016-12-19T12:48:41.353Z| vmx| I120: ToolsUpdateManifestInfoWorkerThreadDone: Compared tools manifest from host and from the guest. Status = 3.

Status 3 indicates that the guest VMware Tools is the current version. Guest VMware Tools manifest.txt is corrupted.

Workaround:

Replace the corrupted VMware Tools manifest.txt file with the one from the guest version of VMware Tools installation
Upgrade VMware Tools.

For Windows guest, VMware Tools manifest.txt file is available in C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Tools\manifest.txt.

Shared folder shows empty on Ubuntu17.04 with open-vm-tools.
On rebooting Ubuntu 17.04 with open-vm-tools installed, the shared folders /mnt directory is empty. This issue is observed even after installing Ubuntu 17.04 using easy install, enabling shared folders in VM settings and selecting Always Enabled.
Workaround:

Disable Shared Folders in the interface
Enable Shared Folders after the VM is powered on with VMware Tools running.