Colocation to Virtualization

The following is a quick overview of installing VMware Tools on RedHat, CentOS, and Fedora systems.  Specifically for VMware ESX, ESXi, and vSphere systems.

First, go into the VMware console and right-click on the VM (Virtual Machine) that you are going to install VMware tools on.  Select “Install/Upgrade VMware Tools” option from the list.  Below is a screen shot of the menu.

VMware Tools Menu

By default, most CDROM devices are symbolically linked to /dev/cdrom by the operating system.

Just in case, you can search the messages file to see the actual device. This is needed only if /dev/cdrom is not automatically linked or you have setup multiple cdrom devices on the VM (Virtual Machine).

[root@RHserver01 media]# cat /var/log/messages | grep CDROM
Jan 10 10:59:03 RHserver01 kernel: hda: VMware Virtual IDE CDROM Drive, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

From above, you can see that the actual device is hda, specifically /dev/hda. If you are just curious you can do an “ll” on the /dev/cdrom device to see where is it linked to. In this case again, it’s going to hda.

[root@RHserver01 ~]# ll /dev/cdrom
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Jan 12 13:18 /dev/cdrom -> hda

Mount the cdrom device to an empty or non-mounted point on the filesystem. Here I use the defaultly present /media location.

[root@RHserver01 /]# mount /dev/cdrom /media/
mount: block device /dev/cdrom is write-protected, mounting read-only

Below we move into the /media location using “cd”.

[root@RHserver01 /]# cd /media/

“ls” is used to display what files are present. Here we see both an RPM (native RedHat based OS package) and a gzip archive. If you were installing VMware Tools on a non-RedHat derived distribution, you would use the .gz package.

[root@RHserver01 media]# ls
VMwareTools-3.5.0-143128.i386.rpm  VMwareTools-3.5.0-143128.tar.gz

Since we are on RedHat, this is simple. Pass “-i” to the rpm command then the package name to be installed.

[root@RHserver01 media]# rpm -i VMwareTools-3.5.0-143128.i386.rpm

Immediately after installing the RPM, you might see the following errors to your console, or in /var/log/messages.

Jan 12 13:15:07 RHserver01 kernel: VFS: busy inodes on changed media or resized disk hda
Jan 12 13:15:07 RHserver01 kernel: VFS: busy inodes on changed media or resized disk hda

If you are getting these to the console, it makes it hard to continue working form the command line. This is easy to stop. First, cd out of the /media/ mount point

[root@RHserver01 ~]# cd ..

Next, unmount the cdrom device. After doing so, the messages will stop

[root@RHserver01 ~]# umount /dev/cdrom

The “vmware-config-tools.pl” command must be ran from the VMware console. Below is the output you would get if it was tried through a remote session (SSH).

[root@RHserver01 ~]# vmware-config-tools.pl

It looks like you are trying to run this program in a remote session. This
program will temporarily shut down your network connection, so you should only
run it from a local console session. Are you SURE you want to continue?
[no]
Please re-run this program from a local console shell.
Execution aborted.

There is a good reason for this. vmware-config-tools.pl drops networking on the server to install the VMware network drives. In doing so, you loose remote connectivity.

Below shows the actual output from vmware-config-tools.pl on the console

[root@RHserver01 ~]# vmware-config-tools.pl
Shutting down interface eth0:                              [  OK  ]
Shutting down loopback interface:                          [  OK  ]
Stopping VMware Tools services in the virtual machine:
   Guest operating system daemon:                          [  OK  ]
   Unmounting HGFS shares:                                 [  OK  ]
   Guest filesystem driver:                                [  OK  ]
   Guest memory manager:                                   [  OK  ]
Trying to find a suitable vmmemctl module for your running kernel.

The module bld-2.6.18-8.el5-i686smp-RHEL5 loads perfectly in the running
kernel.

Trying to find a suitable vmhgfs module for your running kernel.

The module bld-2.6.18-8.el5-i686smp-RHEL5 loads perfectly in the running
kernel.

Trying to find a suitable vmxnet module for your running kernel.

The module bld-2.6.18-8.el5-i686smp-RHEL5 loads perfectly in the running
kernel.

Trying to find a suitable vmblock module for your running kernel.

The module bld-2.6.18-8.el5-i686smp-RHEL5 loads perfectly in the running
kernel.

No X install found.

Starting VMware Tools services in the virtual machine:
   Switching to guest configuration:                       [  OK  ]
   Guest memory manager:                                   [  OK  ]
   Guest vmxnet fast network device:                       [  OK  ]
   DMA setup:                                              [  OK  ]
   Guest operating system daemon:                          [  OK  ]

The configuration of VMware Tools 3.5.0 build-143128 for Linux for this running
kernel completed successfully.

You must restart your X session before any mouse or graphics changes take
effect.

You can now run VMware Tools by invoking the following command:
"/usr/bin/vmware-toolbox" during an X server session.

To use the vmxnet driver, restart networking using the following commands:
/etc/rc.d/init.d/network stop
rmmod pcnet32
rmmod vmxnet
depmod -a
modprobe vmxnet
/etc/rc.d/init.d/network start

If you wish to configure any experimental features, please run the following
command: "vmware-config-tools.pl --experimental".

Enjoy,

--the VMware team

Notes: From my experience, restart of networking via init.d scripts or rebooting the server is always needed. I personally always reboot the server to be safe.