VMware Tools | 07 MAY 2020 | Build 15902021 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
• Earlier Releases of VMware Tools
• Before You Begin
• Internationalization
• End of Feature Support Notice
• Compatibility Notes
• Guest Operating System Customization Support
• Interoperability Matrix
• Installation and Upgrades for This Release
• Resolved Issues
• Known Issues

What's New

• From this release onwards, VMware Tools is updated with a new key or certificate pair for signing Tools ISO files, which did not exist in pre 6.5U2 ESX hosts. Customers can either upgrade the ESX hosts to 6.5U2 onwards or download the tools setup.exe from https://packages.vmware.com/tools/releases to the guest and run it from there. For more details, refer KB 78537.
• OSS updates:
  • openssl, libpng, and glib (in windows) versions are upgraded to 1.0.2u,1.2.59, and 2.56.3 respectively.
  • Pcre is upgraded to the latest version 8.43.

Earlier Releases of VMware Tools

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

Before You Begin

• VMware Tools 10.3.22 supports the following guest operating systems:
  • linux.iso supports Linux guest operating systems Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 and 6, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 (see Known Issues), Ubuntu 12.04. linux.iso also supports other distributions with glibc versions 2.5 and later.
    
    For later versions of the above guest operating systems, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7 and later, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 12 and later, Ubuntu 14.04 and later, it is recommended to install the OS vendor provided open-vm-tools . For instructions, refer Installing open-vm-tools. For more details, refer KB 2073803.
• 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.

Note:

For other ISOs, use VMware Tools 10.3.10 or 11.0.0 release versions.

Important note about upgrading to ESXi 6.5 or later

Resolution on incompatibility and general guidelines: While upgrading ESXi hosts to ESXi 6.5 or later, and using older versions of Horizon View Agent, refer to the knowledge base articles:

• Connecting to View desktops with Horizon View Agent 5.3.5 or earlier hosted on ESXi 6.0 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 6.0 or later fails with a black screen.
• Connecting to View desktops with Horizon View Agent 6.1.x hosted on ESXi 6.0 or later fails with a black screen.

Internationalization

VMware Tools 10.3.22 is available in the following languages:

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

End of Feature Support Notice

• VMware Tools 10.3.5 freezes feature support for tar tools and OSPs 
  The tar tools (linux.iso) and OSPs shipped with VMware Tools 10.3.5 release will continue to be supported. However, releases after VMware Tools 10.3.5 will only include critical and security fixes and no new feature support in these types of VMware Tools (tar tools and OSP's). It is recommended that customers use open-vm-tools for those operating systems that support open-vm-tools. For more information on different types of VMware Tools, see https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2016/02/understanding-the-three-types-of-vm-tools.html

Compatibility Notes

• 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. 

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.

Known Issues

• Drag functionality fails to work in Ubuntu.

  Drag functionality fails to work in Ubuntu 16.04.4 32-bit virtual machine installed using easy install. Also, failure of copy and paste functionality is observed in the same system.

  Note: This issue is applicable for VMware Tools running on Workstation and Fusion.

  Workaround:

  • Add the modprobe.blacklist=vmwgfx linux kernel boot option.
  • To gain access to larger resolutions, remove svga.guestBackedPrimaryAware = "TRUE" option from the VMX file.
• Shared Folders mount is unavailable on Linux VM.

  If the Shared Folders feature is enabled on a Linux VM while it is powered off, shared folders mount is not available on restart.

  Note: This issue is applicable for VMware Tools running on Workstation and Fusion.

  Workaround:

  If the VM is powered on, disable and enable the Shared Folders feature from the interface.
  For resolving the issue permanently, edit /etc/fstab and add an entry to mount the Shared Folders automatically on boot.
  For example, add the line:
  vmhgfs-fuse   /mnt/hgfs    fuse    defaults,allow_other    0    0

• UI/Desktop features fail on SLES 11 and SLED 11 guests.

  The desktop plugins fail to load. For instance, in the following commands (executed as the root user)
  
  ps -ef | grep tools
  
  root 2077 1 0 12:51 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/vmtoolsd
  dsktopusr 4870 1 0 13:01 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/vmware-tools/sbin32/vmtoolsd -n vmusr
  
  lsof -p <dsktopusr-pid> | grep plugins
  
  vmtoolsd 4870 dsktopusr mem REG 8,2 261468 305657 /usr/lib/vmware-tools/plugins32/common/libvix.so
  vmtoolsd 4870 dsktopusr mem REG 8,2 9356 305656 /usr/lib/vmware-tools/plugins32/common/libhgfsServer.so
  
  There are three desktop related plugins missing from the pluginsNN/vmusr/ directory.

  Workaround:

  For SLES 11 and SLED 11 guests running on VMware ESXi: 

  • Use the SLES or SLED UI to change screen resolution, or use VMware Tools version 10.2.5.

  For SLES 11 and SLED 11 guests running on VMware Fusion or VMware Workstation:

  • For a working set of VMware Tools desktop features, install VMware Tools version 10.2.5.