Greetings / Questions about open-vm-tools and VMware tools. / Peter

[Piotrek P <to....@gm...>]

Dear All,
I would like to ask you about few things. First of all I need to
admit, that I'm not a profesionalist when talking about linux systems.
I have some experience gathered for over ten years, but I have never
used linux as main OS for our servers. On VMware community I have
participate in series of thread about installing VMware Tools in
supported/unsupported linux distributions. Unfortunately VMware cannot
give us offical statements about VMware Tools.

I am working with VMware software already for some time [walked
throught VMware Player, VMware Server 2.0, Workstation 6.5, 7, 8
(using it all the time), ESX3.5, 4.0, i4.1 (using it all the time)].
We are using Debian distribution for our NAT/Compression purposes. For
each of VMware products I spotted that different versions of VMware
tools are installed. I think that it is normal but case is more
complicated if we are dealing with for example Debian 6.0 on ESX3.5,
4.0, i4.1 - this version of Debian is officialy unsupported.

Of course it is working, even without VMware Tools. Debian 6.0 Squeeze
as minimal installation is failproof in my opinion. Problem accurs
when trying to install VMware Tools on it. In fact the installation is
ended with success, but compiling additional modules generates
problems.

On ESX3.5 with Debian 6.0 virtual machine (VM) on it, first thing we
can meet while installing VMware Tools is lack of few needed packages.
I made lot of tests, installed Debian 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 thousand times and
right now I know that in order to install VMware tools on it (Debian
6.0) I need: linux-headers-`uname -r`, gcc-4.3, psmisc (for killall
binary), binutils, make. Also there is possibility to create symlink
ln –sf /usr/bin/gcc-4.3 /usr/bin/gcc in order to skip entering path to
/usr/bin/gcc-4.3 after invoking ./vmware-config.pl.

Strange situation occurs when we trying to install VMware Tools on
Debian 6.0 in Workstation 8. While trying to enter path to
/usr/bin/gcc-4.3 after invoking ./vmware-config.pl even if we enter
it, VMware Tools cannot find gcc under that path. In order to do that
we need to install aditional package named libglib2.0. Funny thing is
that, we don't have to do this on ESX3.5 (installing libglib2.0) and
also, we are ABLE to enter this /usb/bin/gcc-4.3 path. Both situations
can be reconstructed each time on minimal Debian 6.0 installation
(system is installed from official netinstal .iso).

After we install VMware Tools on Debian 6.0 Squeeze on ESXi4.1
(without any problems), when starting VM, we can see errors about
UDEV. I have found lot of solutions for this problem but even that
could you tell me how is possible that VMware Tools are changing
something in system and invoking problem with UDEV?

What I would like to ask:

- What are in fact VMware Tools?
- Why versions and build of VMware Tools is changed in every version
of VMware products? (There is other version for VMware Player,
Workstation, ESX3.5, 4.0 etc.).
- Are the tools compatibility backward? (Can I install VMware tools
from ESX5.0 for Debian 6.0 on ESX3.5?)
- I have read on open-vm-tools.sourceforge.net that stable version of
open-vm-tools are based on Workstation 7 - Does it means basics
"engine" functionality of VMware Tools is independent of guest
system/ESX/Player/Workstation/Etc.?
- What VMware is changing in their tools on each new version of tools?
(Is the new functionallity added to new version but tools are still
compatible backward?)
- What kind of packages are need to install VMware Tools/vm-open-tools
(have you checked dependies)?
- What are differences between VMware Tools and vm-open tools?

I haven't found answers for that questions. As you are developers of
vm-open-tools, I would be glad to ask people who know what are doing.
I have opportunity to test vm-open-tools on our virtual environments
but first I would like to know theory and your opinion. Many thanks in
advance for answering and apologize for my lack of english language
skills.

Best regards,
Peter P.