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  • 1.  VMware tools for CentOS 4

    Posted Nov 19, 2016 05:21 PM

    Hello,

    Yesterday we ran into a problem with an old CentOS 4.4 installation, when performing Veeam backup on the virtual machine.

    The VM have been migrated from an old datacenter to a new datacenter, and dosent have VMware tools installed.

    Ive been looking "all over the internet", to find an .ISO file containing the VMware tools for this VM (ESXi 4, ESX 3.5, etc...).

    We know that installing such old VMware tools is not supported in ESXi 6.0 U2 (the new datacenter), but the VM is extremely critical, and cant be terminated yet.

    Is there any way to find this Linux ISO file, so that we can install VMware tools in the VM?

    Thanks in advance.



  • 2.  RE: VMware tools for CentOS 4

    Posted Nov 21, 2016 06:06 PM

    CentOS and RHEL are binary compatible and I have always used the OSP releases for RHEL on CentOS without issue.

    Operating System Specific Packages Home Page

    However it seems that RHEL4 has fallen off the OSP support matrix in the latest release for vSphere 6.5.  However OSPs offer quite a bit of forward and backward compatibility so you should be able to use the latest release for vSphere 6 even if you are using deploying on vSphere 6.5.  You can download them here:

    https://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/6.0latest/rhel4/index.html

    Obviously I recommend testing before rolling out onto a production system, but I have had a lot of success with OSP packages over the years.  Simply sync the repo (or download all the RPMs) and install them as you would any set of RPMs.

    If you need help with reposync and/or createrepo just let me know.  I'll try and walk you through it.



  • 3.  RE: VMware tools for CentOS 4

    Posted Nov 28, 2016 07:08 AM

    Hello,

    Thank you for the detailed information, but i am no Linux expert at all :smileysad:

    Ive already taken a look at the packages, but i have only worked with Windows in the past, which is easy since its just executing an .exe file.

    Could you provide me with the filename(s) of the files i need to install, and most of all how to install it?



  • 4.  RE: VMware tools for CentOS 4
    Best Answer

    Posted Nov 28, 2016 10:03 PM

    Unfortunately the packages you will need will depend on a number of circumstances, since some meta-RPMs, such as vmware-tools-esx-nox, explicitly require other RPMs depending on your configuration.  I usually sync the entire repository onto a local server as part of my provisioning process.

    However there is a manual way to do this, which I will walk you though.

    First you need to determine if your system is 32-bit or 64-bit.  Log into your system and run either arch or uname -m.  This will print the kernel architecture of your system.  If the command puts out x86_64 then you're running 64-bit.  Otherwise if it says something like i386 or i686 you are running 32-bit.

    In a web browser go to https://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/6.0latest/rhel4/index.html.

    If your CentOS system is 32-bit only, go to the i386 folder.

    If your CentOS system is 64-bit, go to the x86_64 folder.

    Now while this is a bit of a pain, you can click and download all the RPM files (you can ignore the headers and repodata folders) to your system.  Then copy them to your CentOS box into any folder of your choosing.  For this example we'll put them in /var/tmp/vmware.

    Once you have them on your CentOS system in /var/tmp/vmware (or wherever you chose to put them) you can create a local yum repository with the following commands (you must be logged in as root or use sudo):

    [root@server ~]# which createrepo || yum -y install createrepo

    [root@server ~]# createrepo /var/tmp/vmware

    Note:  If the first command fails then you don't have have createrepo installed or a basic CentOS repo configured to pull it from, and you should not proceed with the other command.  You will need to find your CentOS 4 disc and install createrepo from that, or you can download all the files in the repodata folder from the link above and put them in /var/tmp/vmware/repodata exactly as you downloaded them.  This should work since repo definitions are relative.

    At this point you will have a local repository that is ready to go, you just need to configure CentOS to use it.  Create a file called /etc/yum.repos.d/vmware.repo as shown below:

    [vmware-osp]

    name=Local VMware OSP repository

    baseurl=file:///var/tmp/vmware

    enabled=0

    gpgcheck=0

    Once that is done, issue the following commands to install on your server if it is running X11 (i.e. a GUI desktop)

    [root@server ~]# yum --disablerepo=* --enablerepo=vmware-osp install vmware-tools-esx-kmods vmware-tools-esx

    Otherwise, if you are running a simple server with no GUI (text console and/or SSH login only):

    [root@server ~]# yum --disablerepo=* --enablerepo=vmware-osp install vmware-tools-esx-kmods vmware-tools-esx-nox

    That's it.  It really isn't that tough usually if you are comfortable with reposync and createrepo.  But I have to assume that your CentOS system is not connected to the Internet and doesn't have access to a local yum repo with the CentOS DVD and/or updates.  If you are connected to the Internet and you do have a local repo or OS DVD reply back and I'll show you how you can use reposync which will make the above *much* easier.   I might also be able to peak at one of my systems and figure out exactly which RPMs you'll need, in which case we can try and manually install the RPMs and avoid the yum repository hassle altogether.

    Once you have this solved life will be pretty easy since as I said OSPs are pretty good at forward and backwards compatibility between ESXi releases.



  • 5.  RE: VMware tools for CentOS 4

    Posted Dec 03, 2016 01:23 PM

    Thank you so much!!!

    You guide was very straight forward, and we managed to install VMware tools with the commands you provided :smileyhappy:

    I will save your guide for future upgrades :smileyhappy:

    Since this was very easy to follow, and just worked right away, i was wondering if we can use the same procedure to upgrade VMware tools on other CentOS4 machines?

    They already gave VMware tools installed, but is not supported by the ESXi version :smileysad:

    Thanks in advance! :smileyhappy:



  • 6.  RE: VMware tools for CentOS 4

    Posted Dec 05, 2016 08:20 PM

    You most certainly can, but you should uninstall the old unmanaged version first, which I assume was installed using the script mounted by the hypervisor (i.e. the Perl script installer).

    Simply run /usr/bin/vmware-uninstall-tools.pl and follow the prompts.


    Once you have OSPs installed (i.e. RPMs) you do not need to uninstall/reinstall between upgrades; you simply use yum update or rpm -U like with any RPM software.



  • 7.  RE: VMware tools for CentOS 4

    Posted Oct 05, 2017 08:01 AM

    Hello!

    we are using a old CentOS 4.2 (32Bit) on a vSphere 6.5U1 environment. Can I use the same procedure to install the latest VMware tools with the following link?

    Index of /45848/tools/esx/6.5u1/rhel5/x86_64

    Thanks in advance,