Updated on: 17 JUN 2021

VMware Tools | 17 JUN 2021 | Build 18090558

Check back for additions and updates to these release notes.

What's in the Release Notes

The release notes cover the following topics:

What's New

  • When GlobalConf feature related settings are modified in the VMware Tools Configuration file (tools.conf), the VMware Tools System service (vmsvc) does not need to restart. For more details about the GlobalConf feature, see Distribute VMware Tools Configuration at Scale for Windows.
  • A new command line option "/pv" is added in the VMware Tools setup.exe to show the package versions that it will install.
  • When a VMware Tools component is installed or upgraded, a notification is displayed to the user to restart the system. The user can enable or disable this notification display in the Window's VM's system settings.
    • Note: 
      This feature is available only on VMware Remote Console and Web Console.
  • The VMCI driver is installed by default as part of VMware Tools installation. If the user had disabled the VMCI driver in the setup settings during a previous installation, VMware Tools automatically re-installs VMCI driver during the upgrade.
    Note:
    The VMCI driver cannot be disabled because the VMware Tools System service functionality depends on it.​

Earlier Releases of VMware Tools

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

Before You Begin

  • VMware Tools 11.3.0 supports the following guest operating systems:
    • windows.iso supports Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and later. 
      • The Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable package is a prerequisite for installing VMware Tools for Windows 11.3.0 and ships with the VMware Tools 11.3.0 download package. While preparing a Windows guest for installation, VMware Tools runs the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package installer which checks for the presence of a more recent version on the guest. If the guest has a more recent version already present, the package does not install.
        For a 32-bit Windows guest, the prerequisite version is Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable (x86) version 14.28.29913.0.
        For a 64-bit Windows guest, the prerequisite versions are Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable (x86) version 14.28.29913.0 and Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable (x64) version 14.28.29913.0.
      • Installing or upgrading to VMware Tools 11.3.0 is not supported for Windows versions that do not meet the prerequisite. Customers should continue to use VMware Tools 10.2.x or older until they can patch or update their Windows OS to meet the prerequisites for VMware Tools 11.3.0. Refer to Microsoft's update KB2977003 for latest supported Visual C++ downloads.
      • Windows OS level prerequisites
        • Windows Server 2019
        • Windows Server 2016
        • Windows 10
        • Windows Server 2012 R2 with Microsoft's update KB2919355
        • Windows 8.1 with Microsoft's update  KB2919355
        • Windows Server 2012 
        • Windows 8
        • Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) with Microsoft's update KB4474419.
        • Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) with Microsoft's update KB4474419.
    • darwin.iso supports Mac OS X versions 10.11 and later.
    • For details on linux.iso, refer to VMware Tools 10.3.23 Release Notes.
    • For details on solaris.iso, refer to VMware Tools 10.3.10 Release Notes.
  • 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.

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:

Internationalization

VMware Tools 11.3.0 is available in the following languages:

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

Product Support Notice

  • The Windows pre-Vista iso image for VMWare Tools is no longer packaged with ESXi. The Windows pre-Vista iso image is available for download by users who require it. For download information, see the Product Download page.

End of Feature Support Notice

  • The Balloon driver has been removed from MacOS VMware Tools 11.1.0.
  • The tar tools (linux.iso) and OSPs shipped with VMware Tools 10.3.x 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.

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.

This release provides packages to upgrade VMware Tools 11.2.5 or later deployments using GuestStore.

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

Windows guest drivers installed by VMware Tools

VMware Tools 11.3.0 supports the following driver versions on a Windows Guest Operating System:

Drivers VMware Tools 11.3.0
Hardware Drivers
efifwfromhost.bin

1.0.0.0
pvscsi.sys

For Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 Release 2:  1.3.15.0

For Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 Release 2, Windows Server 2016, and Windows Server 2019:  1.3.17.0
vmaudio.sys

5.10.0.3506
vmci.sys

9.8.16.0
vmmouse.sys

12.5.10.0
vmusbmouse.sys

12.5.10.0
vmxnet2.sys

2.2.0.0
vmxnet3.sys

1.9.2.0
wddm.sys

8.17.03.0001
Software Drivers
giappdef.sys

2.3.1.0
glgxi.sys

2.3.0.0
vmhgfs.sys

11.0.42.0
vmmemctl.sys

7.5.5.0
vmrawdsk.sys

1.1.5.0
vnetWFP.sys

11.3.0.0
vsepflt.sys

11.3.0.0
vsock.sys

9.8.17.0
Security DLL
vmwsu.dll

2.5.0.0

Resolved Issues

  • Application hangs or shutdown of guest VM gets stuck.

    Threads in vsepflt can cause a deadlock due to the oplock being overridden, which results in hang during guest shutdown.

    This issue is fixed in this release.

  • Unexpected warning log messages in the VMware Tools log file.

    Starting from VMware Tools version 11.2.5 onwards, the VMware Tools system service log (default 'C:\Windows\Temp\vmware-vmsvc-SYSTEM.log') repeatedly shows the following warning log message:

    [ warning] [vmsvc] ToolsNotifyGetKeyValue: Cannot open the registry \Software\VMware, Inc.\NeedReboot: 2

    This issue is fixed in this release.

  • VMware Tools does not report "per second rate" type of guest stats for Linux VMs with some non en-US locales.

    For Linux VMs with some non en-US locales (such as es_ES locale), VMware Tools does not report "per second rate" type of guest stats on vROps. For example, Guest|Page In Rate per second.

    This issue is fixed in 11.3.0 open-vm-tools release. Prior to getting the fix in open-vm-tools, the workaround is:

    Add export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 in vmtoolsd daemon start script.

  • VMware Tools for Windows update addresses a denial-of-service vulnerability.

    VMware Tools for Windows contains a denial-of-service vulnerability in the VM3DMP driver. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2021-21997 to this issue. For more information, see VMSA-2021-0011.

    This issue is fixed in this release.

Known Issues

The known issues are grouped as follows.

VMware Tools Issues
  • After upgrading to a new version VMware Tools with an installer parameter to remove the NetworkIntrospection feature, the old version of the vnetflt or vnetWFP driver service continues to run.

    After the upgrade, the NetworkIntrospection feature is not present in the system's VMware Tools MSI database, but the feature's vnetflt or vnetWFP driver service still exists.

    Workaround:

    Refer to KB 78016. 

    Note: Future tools upgrade from version 11.1.0 to a newer tools version will not have the issue.

  • VMware Tools upgrade fails on Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 without SHA-2 code signing support.

    Microsoft has changed Windows driver signing to use the SHA-2 algorithm exclusively starting December 3, 2019. Legacy Windows systems without SHA-2 code signing support fail driver signature verification.

    Workaround:

    Refer to KB 78708.

  • AppDefense driver glxgi logs an error in the event viewer.

    AppDefense driver glxgi logs an error in the event viewer similar to the following:

    "The glxgi service failed to start due to the following error: A device attached to the system is not functioning."

    The events are observed when Guest Integrity is disabled.

    Workaround:

    These events do not impact the system and are safe to ignore.

  • Installing or upgrading versions earlier than VMware Tools 10.3.0 to VMware Tools 11.1.x might take longer and Windows OS might need a restart.

    Installation process might appear to be in progress and displays a message similar to the following:
    ​ "Preparing 'VMware Tools' for installation..."

    During this process, the user might be prompted to restart the operating system. 

    For more information, see KB 55798.

VMware Tools Issues in VMware Workstation or Fusion
  • Shared Folders mount is unavailable on Linux VM.

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

    Note: This issue is applicable to 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

  • Drag functionality fails to work in Ubuntu.

    Drag functionality fails to work in Ubuntu 16.04.4 32-bit virtual machines installed using Easy Install. Also, failure of the copy and paste functionality is observed in the same systems.

    Note: This issue is applicable to 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.
VMware Tools Issue in VMware Horizon
  • WDDM driver fails on Windows Update installation when Horizon Agent is installed on Windows 8/Windows 8.1/Windows Server 2008 R2.

    When Horizon Agent is installed on Windows 8/Windows 8.1/Windows Server 2008 R2, the WDDM driver fails on Windows Update installation.

    The WDDM driver will be made available through Windows Update service, when the driver publication process completes.

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