vmrun getguestipaddress only works when the VM is started from the Fusion GUI

[brosenz]

I did install open-vm-tools on both VMs, but the command vmrun getguestipaddress only works if I start the VM from the Fusion GUI (Virtual Machine Library), if I start the VM using the vmrun -T fusion <path-to-vmx> nogui, (in headless mode) I will get the error: "Error: The VMware Tools are not running in the virtual machine".

I have tested this with Alpine 18 and Debian 12 VMs, always the same behavior, and I have confirmed that when running with vmrun nongui the vm-open-tools Service is running in the guest.

Any idea why this? In theory if I run the VM from the Fusion GUI or vmrun nongui should provide the exact same result, its the same VM, thanks

[Technogeezer]

I'm seeing the same thing. Not sure if this is a bug or "behaving as designed" -- but either way it's annoying and unhelpful. It appears that when starting a VM with the nogui option, the running state of the in-guest tools is not passed to whatever vmrun is using to check the status of the tools. If you execute vmrun -T fusion checkToolsState <path to vmx> after starting the VM with nogui, the state is shown as Installed, not Running. 

I'm thinking that it might be possible to build an in-guest script that gets the IP address via ip addr, and then use that as the command to run with vmrun -T <path to vmx> runProgramInGuest <script path> Some quick testing seems to show that the runProgramInGuest works even though the state of the tools is not known.