[sles-beta] Beta 5 and VMware-tools

Wed Apr 23 22:05:03 MDT 2014

Hi Kai,Joe,urs, allen, mge, Thorsten, uwe and all, 

Thanks a lot for your comments and concerns for open-vm-tools. I am copying John who might have more info in this list. 

We are working closely with SUSE with related items. Such as, you might know that toolsd service from open-vm-tools in current build will not be started automatically and you need to execute "sudo systemctl enable vmtoolsd" and "sudo systemctl start vmtoolsd" to start its service manually. Legacy tools service doesn't work well in current build , you will be suggested to remove some packages for "open-vm-tools" first for its legacy tools installation. Such as packages "open-vm-tools","open-vm-desktop" and "libvmtools0" 

Don't hesitate to let us know for any related issues :) 

Thanks again for all your supports and suggestions! 

Best Regards, 

Bo Dang 

bdang at vmware.com 
Level 8 South Wing of Tower C Raycom InfoTech Park 
No. 2 Kexueyuan South Road Haidian District Beijing, 100190, People's Republic of China 
+86-10-5993-4242 Office 
+86-10-5993-4205 Fax 

From: "Joe Doupnik" <jrd at netlab1.net> 
To: sles-beta at lists.suse.com 
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2014 12:11:51 AM 
Subject: Re: [sles-beta] Beta 5 and VMware-tools 

Kai, 
Thanks for taking the time to write up this situation. The story appears to be better than I had thought. 
Joe D. 

On 23/04/2014 15:39, Kai Dupke wrote: 

VMware already made a statement on this list before, but I asked them to
clarify again.

The open-vm-tools are maintained by VMware but organized as an open
source project.

SLES 12 include the tools because VMware as partner asked us to include
them, which is a good fit to our guest story.

The today situation is an interim situation as with chicken-egg, because
VMware can't drop the tools from the ESX product as SLES 11 for example
does not contain the open-vm-tools at the moment.

At the same time VMware can't just change the wording as the
open-vm-tools are, open available for each to rebuild and grab, which
could lead to false positive display.

My understanding is that VMware will change the message to something
like 'guest provided' in the display of the client, without any 3rd
party or other confusion statement.

We also work with VMware to get the support finalized in a way that
these package will be tagged as fully supported.

greetings kai

On 04/23/2014 03:42 PM, Joe Doupnik wrote: 

<blockquote>

The key word is "if". We don't know that. There are various versions
of VMware hypervisor in use, little is known about how the open-vmware
tools fit into that puzzle and what it does/does not support in the way
of features.
    Let's look at this geometrically, for welcomed relief. There is
VMware, there are SUSE virtual machines, and sandwiched between is a set
of tools. There are two interfaces involved. At the moment VMware-tools
matches the hypervisor version of choice. The third party open-vmware
offering hopefully (that ambiguous word) works with both sides today
(not necessarily true in the recent past), yet it is a third party to be
coordinated with the other two by means still unknown. The SUSE part of
things changed so that the VMware tools will not build with our v12 beta
5 material; again the reasons are unknown.
    How this situation will evolve during our beta is also unknown.
    Which of these approaches offers least risk and broad version
coverage? Risk includes what the vendors involved will accept as a
proper systems component when fingers are pointed. That's a description
of what is concerning us about this situation.
    Joe D.

On 23/04/2014 14:27, Beddingfield, Allen wrote: 

<blockquote>

I'm having a hard time understanding why there is such concern here. 
VMware supporting the open-vm-tools is preferable to me.  I can then
use SUSE Manager to also manage my vm tools, instead of having to rely
on VMware for such things.  I actually have a script that currently
does this, instead of using VMware's interface, but if the
functionality is the same, installing/updating is easier, and VMware
doesn't care/supports it, I don't see a problem.

-- 
Allen Beddingfield
Systems Engineer
The University of Alabama
________________________________
From: sles-beta-bounces at lists.suse.com [ sles-beta-bounces at lists.suse.com ] on behalf of urs.frey at post.ch [ urs.frey at post.ch ]
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2014 2:04 AM
To: jrd at netlab1.net ; sles-beta at lists.suse.com Subject: Re: [sles-beta] Beta 5 and VMware-tools

Hi
I fully agree with Joe
I mean I use VMwareTools coming together with the specific ESXi
release for good reasons for years now on different Linux distributions.
Now with SLES12 beta I am kind of “urged” to use open-vm-tools which
obviously do not match the VMware environment I have here.

Wouldn’t it be a solution to leave the final decision about which
VMware Tools to use to the end user?

So I may choose to install what comes with SLES or I can also use what
gets delivered from ESXi.
Therefore no automated installations anymore together with SLES12.

We do not know what the plans on VMware are.
For the moment, the statements of VMware about open-vm-tools do not
really convince me. http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2073803 Best regards

Urs Frey
Post CH AG
Informationstechnologie
IT Betrieb
Webergutstrasse 12
3030 Bern (Zollikofen)
Telefon : ++41 (0)58 338 58 70
FAX     : ++41 (0)58 667 30 07
E-Mail: urs.frey at post.ch <mailto:urs.frey at post.ch> Von: sles-beta-bounces at lists.suse.com [ mailto:sles-beta-bounces at lists.suse.com ] Im Auftrag von Joe Doupnik
Gesendet: Tuesday, April 22, 2014 8:24 PM
An: sles-beta at lists.suse.com Betreff: Re: [sles-beta] Beta 5 and VMware-tools

     Keeping a perspective on this. There is now a gulf between SLES
v12 beta 5 and the VMware tools (o/s kind other 64-bit) provided with
ESXi v5. The VMware software stalls while making kmods. That's all
observational evidence. What we don't know is what changed. I will
presume that the SLES (including kernel) part has, for probably good
reasons, and that sooner or later VMware will issue tools for the v12
level of SLES. But that is only my guessing.
     What remains unconvincing is saying VMware recommends the
open-vmware tools. Lots of room to interpret what is said by whom and
in what context. The evidence says VMware ships their own tools rather
than the open-vmware ones. Folks with contractual details may well be
concerned, but we give the betas a chance to develop further before
jumping to firm conclusions.
     Joe D.

On 22/04/2014 17:58, Joe Doupnik wrote:
     vCenter is a high priced separate management product. I do not
have it. ESXi servers have their own set of VMware tools. We click on
the vSphere client to request they be installed in a VM. They match
the particular version of ESXi. They don't work with beta 5, which
means there are two branches of tools and the vendor's branch has been
made inoperable. The open-vmware-tools item has had a rather chequered
history. I have no good reason to trust that item very far (at this
time). Now the branches are really separated. Not a comfortable
situation.
     Joe D.

On 22/04/2014 17:49, Kai Dupke wrote:

On 04/22/2014 02:42 PM, Joe Doupnik wrote:

     Returning to this particular VMware-tools item today.

     Two points.

[...]

The open-vm-tools on SLES are the tools VMware recommends for the use.

With "3rd party" you refer to the display in the Virtual Center I assume.

Bo Dang form VMware commented on this earlier:

Thanks for this info and keep contacting us! As john metnioned in
another thread "The intent of the message was to communicate that end
users do not need to worry about installing/updating VMware tools
centrally from vCenter. Instead users are expected to use OS package
manager to maintain vmware tools or open-vm-tools. We published the
following KB article to clarify that open-vm-tools are "supported" and
there is a FAQ at the bottom about this message at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2073803 " and we are planning to change
message in the future to remove "3rd Party" and instead say something
like "Guest Managed" to reduce user concerns.

greetings

Kai Dupke

Senior Product Manager

Server Product Line

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</blockquote>

Kai Dupke
Senior Product Manager
Server Product Line 

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</blockquote>

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