Vmware tools linux what is

Vmware tools linux what is

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VMware Tools is a set of services and components that enable several features in various VMware products for better management and seamless user interactions with guest operating systems.

VMware Tools Lifecycle Management provides a simplified and scalable approach for installation and upgrade of VMware Tools. It includes a number of feature enhancements, driver-related enhancements, and support for new guest operating systems.

Open VM Tools (open-vm-tools) is the open source implementation of VMware Tools for Linux guest operating systems. For the latest copy of the Open VM Tools source code, see GitHub.

For vSphere deployments, VMware provides operating system specific packages (OSPs) as a packaging and distribution mechanism for VMware Tools. For more information, see VMware Operating System Specific Packages.

Try Our Deployment and Planning Tools

The following resources are designed to help you plan your VMware tools deployment:

• vSphere Hardware and Guest Operating System Compatibility Guides. An online reference that shows what hardware, converged systems, operating systems, third-party applications, and VMware products are compatible with a specific version of a VMware software product.
• VMware Product Interoperability Matrices. Provides details about the compatibility of current and earlier versions of VMware Tools and other VMware products.
• Guest Operating System Installation Guide . This document includes instructions for installing supported guest operating systems on the following VMware products: VMware ESXi/ESX 3.5 and later, VMware Workstation 4.0 and later, VMware Fusion 1.0 and later, VMware ACE 1.0 and later.

Learn More About VMware Tools

To learn more about VMware Tools, see the following resources:

Use VMware Tools Documentation

The VMware Tools document in HTML reflect the latest VMware Tools update release of each major VMware Tools version. All our documentation comes in PDF format, which you can access by selecting the Download PDF icon on any page in the HTML documentation.

You can create custom documentation collections, containing only the content that meets your specific information needs, using MyLibrary.

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Guide to Install VMware Tools on Linux

In an earlier tutorial, you learned to install VMware Workstation on Ubuntu. You can further enhance the functionality of your virtual machines by installing VMware Tools.

If you have already installed a guest OS on VMware, you must have noticed the requirement for VMware tools – even though not completely aware of what it is needed for.

In this article, we will highlight the importance of VMware tools, the features it offers, and the method to install VMware tools on Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution.

VMware Tools: Overview & Features

For obvious reasons, the virtual machine (your Guest OS) will not behave exactly like the host. There will be certain limitations in terms of its performance and operationg. And, that is why a set of utilities (VMware Tools) was introduced.

VMware tools help in managing the guest OS in an efficient manner while also improving its performance.

What exactly is VMware tool responsible for?

You have got a vague idea of what it does – but let us talk about the details:

• Synchronize the time between the guest OS and the host to make things easier.
• Unlocks the ability to pass messages from host OS to guest OS. For example, you copy a text on the host to your clipboard and you can easily paste it to your guest OS.
• Enables sound in guest OS.
• Improves video resolution.
• Improves the cursor movement.
• Fixes incorrect network speed data.
• Eliminates inadequate color depth.

These are the major changes that happen when you install VMware tools on Guest OS. But, what exactly does it contain / feature in order to unlock/enhance these functionalities? Let’s see..

VMware tools: Core Feature Details

If you do not want to know what it includes to enable the functionalities, you can skip this part. But, for the curious readers, let us briefly discuss about it:

VMware device drivers: It really depends on the OS. Most of the major operating systems do include device drivers by default. So, you do not have to install it separately. This generally involves – memory control driver, mouse driver, audio driver, NIC driver, VGA driver and so on.

VMware user process: This is where things get really interesting. With this, you get the ability to copy-paste and drag-drop between the host and the guest OS. You can basically copy and paste the text from the host to the virtual machine or vice versa.

You get to drag and drop files as well. In addition, it enables the pointer release/lock when you do not have an SVGA driver installed.

VMware tools lifecycle management: Well, we will take a look at how to install VMware tools below – but this feature helps you easily install/upgrade VMware tools in the virtual machine.

Shared Folders: In addition to these, VMware tools also allow you to have shared folders between the guest OS and the host.

Of course, what it does and facilitates also depends on the host OS. For example, on Windows, you get a Unity mode on VMware to run programs on virtual machine and operate it from the host OS.

How to install VMware Tools on Ubuntu & other Linux distributions

Note: For Linux guest operating systems, you should already have “Open VM Tools” suite installed, eliminating the need of installing VMware tools separately, most of the time.

Most of the time, when you install a guest OS, you will get a prompt as a software update or a popup telling you to install VMware tools if the operating system supports Easy Install.

Windows and Ubuntu does support Easy Install. So, even if you are using Windows as your host OS or trying to install VMware tools on Ubuntu, you should first get an option to install the VMware tools easily as popup message. Here’s how it should look like:

This is the easiest way to get it done. So, make sure you have an active network connection when you setup the virtual machine.

If you do not get any of these pop ups – or options to easily install VMware tools. You have to manually install it. Here’s how to do that:

1. Launch VMware Workstation Player.

2. From the menu, navigate through Virtual Machine -> Install VMware tools. If you already have it installed, and want to repair the installation, you will observe the same option to appear as “Re-install VMware tools“.

3. Once you click on that, you will observe a virtual CD/DVD mounted in the guest OS.

4. Open that and copy/paste the tar.gz file to any location of your choice and extract it, here we choose the Desktop.

5. After extraction, launch the terminal and navigate to the folder inside by typing in the following command:

cd Desktop/VMwareTools-10.3.2-9925305/vmware-tools-distrib

You need to check the name of the folder and path in your case – depending on the version and where you extracted – it might vary.

Replace Desktop with your storage location (such as cd Downloads) and the rest should remain the same if you are installing 10.3.2 version.

6. Now, simply type in the following command to start the installation:

You will be asked the password for permission to install, type it in and you should be good to go.

That’s it. You are done. These set of steps should be applicable to almost any Ubuntu-based guest operating system. If you want to install VMware tools on Ubuntu Server, or any other OS.

Wrapping Up

Installing VMware tools on Ubuntu Linux is pretty easy. In addition to the easy method, we have also explained the manual method to do it. If you still need help, or have a suggestion regarding the installation, let us know in the comments down below.

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Установка VMWare Tools в виртуальной машине

VMWare Tools — это набор утилит и драйверов, который повышает производительность гостевой операционной системы и улучшает управление виртуальной машиной VMWare. В состав VMWare Tools входят драйверы необходимые для корректной работы гостевой ОС в среде виртуализации. После установки VMTools некоторые из драйверов ОС заменяются оптимизированными драйверами (например, сетевой драйвер vmxnet3).

В этой статье мы рассмотрим, как установить VMWare Tools на различных гостевых ОС.

VMware Tools поддерживается на 32-и 64-разрядных операционных системах, включая Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X и другие.

Если в виртуальной машине не установлен набор VMWare Tools, то в гостевой операционной системе ВМ отсутствуют некоторые важные функции и возможности.

Также благодаря наличию VMTools в гостевой ОС обеспечивается:

• Корректность и плавность миграции (VMotion and Storage VMotion) между хостами ESXi;
• Выполнение автоматического перезапуска зависшей ВМ на другом хосте с помощью VMware High Availability (HA);
• Корректное подключение и отключение дисков и файлов ISO образов;
• Доступна кастомизация ОС при установке из шаблона (смена пароля администратора, настройка автовхода в ОС, смена уникального UID при клонировании с помощью sysprep и т.д.);
• Повышается производительность ОС;
• Использование memory ballooning для оптимизации использования оперативной памяти хоста.

Чтобы проверить, установлена ли VMWare tools в гостевой ОС виртуальной машине, выберите ее в клиенте vSphere.

Если VMTools не установлены, статус будет “Not Running, not installed”

Установка VMWare Tools в Windows

Чтобы установить VMTools в гостевой ВМ с Windows, нужно подключить ISO файл.

1. Выберите меню Actions -> Guest OS -> Install VMWare Tools;
   
2. Подтвердите монтирование файла. Это действие подключит монтирует к ВМ iso образ с установочными файлами;
   
3. Теперь войдите в гостевую Windows через консоль VMWare или по RDP. Запустите File Explorer и перейдите в This PC. Найдите в списке подключенных дисков VMWare Tools DVD drive и щелкните по нему;
   
4. В открывшемся окне установки VMTools нажмите несколько раз Next и согласитесь с перезагрузкой виртуальной машины;
   
5. Теперь можно отключить установочный диск VMware Tools из виртуальной машины (Action -> Guest OS -> Unmount VMWare Tools Installer).
   
6. В свойствах виртуальной машины вы можете проверить, что VMware Tool установлены в гостевой ОС (VMWare Tools: Running, version:xxx (Current)).
   

Установка VMware Tools в Linux

В дистрибутивах Linux есть два способа установки VMWare tools – с помощью ISO файла vmtools (по аналогии с Windows) и с помощью open-source пакета Open-VM-Tools.

Установка VMTools через ISO образ аналогична установке в Windows, только для запуска установки используется perl-скрипт.

Например, в CentOS установка выполняется так:

Вы можете установить все зависимости, необходимые для установки VMTools с помощью команды: yum -y install kernel-devel gcc dracut make perl

1. Смонтируйте ISO образ с VMTools;
2. В гостевой Linux смонтируйте ISO образ в каталог /mnt: mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/
3. Распакуйте архив с VMTools: cd /mnt/ tar -zxvf VMwareTools-versionxxxx.tar.gz -C /tmp/
4. Перейдите в каталог /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/ и запустите perl скрипт: cd /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/

Также вы можете установить VMTools с помощью пакета Open-VM-Tools (OVT) от VMware. Они доступны для установки из базовых репозиториев с помощью YUM или APT.

Например, в Debian/Ubuntu для установки OVT используется команды:

apt-get update
apt-get install open-vm-tools

Если вы используете Ubuntu с графическим интерфейсом, установите open-vm-tools-desktop:

apt-get install open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop

В CentOS/RHEL используются такие команды:

yum update
yum -y install open-vm-tools

Для запуска службы и добавления ее в автозагрузку, выполните:

service vmtoolsd start
chkconfig vmtoolsd on

Обратите внимание, что после установки OVT в статусе ВМ будет указано:

• Running Status: Running
• Version Status: Guest Managed
  The VMware Tools status is unknown. A VMware Tools implementation is installed on the guest operating system, but it is not managed by VMware.
• Installation Type: Open-source VMware Tools

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