Updated on: 19 SEP 2019

VMware Tools | 29 MAR 2018 | Build 8068406

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 10.2.5 supports the following guest operating systems:
    • 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.
  • NSX driver changes: VMware Tools 10.2.5 supports vnetWFP driver from Windows 7 and later.
  • Quiesced snapshots: Ability to exclude specific file systems from quiesced snapshots on Linux guest operating systems. This configuration can be set in the tools configuration file. For more details, see the VMware Tools Documentation page.
  • Disable display mode setting: A configuration option is introduced to disable normal display mode setting functionality using VMware Tools. For more details, see KB 53572.
  • Changes in the VMXNET3 driver:
    • Receive Side Scaling (RSS): Receive Side Scaling is enabled by default.
    • Receive Throttle: The default value of the receive throttle is set to 30.
      Note: On upgrading VMware Tools, the driver-related changes do not affect the existing configuration of the adapters. The changes are reflected on a fresh install of VMware Tools or when new adapters are added. To add it on existing adapters, the user must use the script or interface. For more details, see KB 2008925.
  • Resolved Issues: This release of VMware Tools resolves few issues which are documented in 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 are frozen for some end of life guest operating systems. Some ISO images are not included 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: 32-bit and 64-bit installer executable (.exe) files are available for download. These files are provided for easier access and installation of VMware Tools in Windows guest operating systems.

When a newer version of vmtoolspkg VIB is installed, VMware Tools status might not change. This limitation is observed in vSphere 5.5.x and update releases. To work around, power off and power on the VM or reboot the host.

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

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

Internationalization

VMware Tools 10.2.5 is available in the following languages:

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

Compatibility Notes

  • VMware Tools 10.2.5 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.

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

VMware Tools 10.2.5 supports the following driver versions on a Windows Guest Operating System.

Drivers VMware Tools 10.2.5
Hardware Drivers
vmci

9.8.6.0
vsock

9.8.10.0
pvscsi

1.3.8.0
wddm

8.15.1.65
xpdm

12.1.8.0
vmxnet3

1.7.3.8
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

10.2.5.0 (For Kernel-Mode Code Signing, Windows Vista and Windows 2008 only)
vnetWFP.sys 

10.2.5.0 (Support for Windows 7 and later)

Resolved Issues

  • VMware Tools 10.2.0 does not recognize UFS filesystem partitions

    VMware Tools 10.2.0 has dropped UFS from the list of known file system type. As a result, the default filesystem of Solaris and FreeBSD is not recognized. VMware Tools Services in the GuestInfo for the virtual machine do not report these filesystems. You might not be able to monitor the disk usage of UFS filesystems with vRealize Operations or vCenter Managed Object Browser.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • 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.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • VMware Tools 10.2.0 WDDM driver is not compatible with View 6.x or earlier.

    Connecting to a virtual machine with View Client might disconnect and fail with a black screen. This issue is observed after installing VMware Tools 10.2.0 WDDM driver on View 6.x and earlier.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • Information about non-existing device mounted to a file system was not reported

    Few Linux guest operating systems might have a non-existing device mounted to a filesystem. For example, dev/root/. VMware Tools does not report this information.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • Windows Server 2008 R2 guest VM ports are exhausted after upgrading to VMware Tools 10.2.0.

    VMware Common Agent Framework (CAF) ManagementAgentHost service process blocks guest networking after running for some time. Attempt to connect remotely fails due to exhausted guest VM ports.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • vnetflt.sys causes active directory problems resulting in an authentication failure.

    Attempts to log in fail due to problems in the active directory. Network Introspection driver vnetflt.sys, which uses deprecated TDI framework causes this failure. The driver is installed during the installation of VMware Tools.

    vnetflt.sys driver is replaced with the new WFP-based vnetWFP driver for Windows 7 and later.

    This issue is resolved in this release. 

  • 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.

    • This issue is resolved in this release.

Known Issues

  • 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:

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