[sles-beta] SLES11-SP4 beta2 x86_64 - VMware Tools Again ...

[Mike Latimer]

Hi,

On Tuesday, March 10, 2015 11:36:23 AM Waite, Dick wrote:
> What has been APITA is the grand Ping_Pong being played between VMware and
> SUSE with “Tools”. With SP3 one used VMware tools for Workstation and one
> was happy. You run an update and the good people of SUSE say, we can do
> better and pop into the mix their “open-vm-tools and libvmtools”, You have
> not asked for this, it’s just done, not check to see if this is a “VMware
> Workstation”.

Thanks for reporting this, and sorry for the troubles. Last time I tested 
VMware-workstation, installing VMware tools was done through a tarball, rather 
than an RPM, so I was not expecting the update process to find anything to 
update.
 
> So you finish the update and all looks Okay, so you then run a VMware tools
> update ‘cos you know you have a new kernel. I’m running VMware Workstation
> 11.1.0 which has tools 9.9.2_2496486 and it’s not given me any issues, so
> far. Re-load after the tools update and Wow… what’s has my mouse been
> smoking !!!!! It’s all over the shop, umm better close down, Wow why is the
> stop script saying it’s not a happy badger….
 
> One does look around and after the fun and games with SLE12 it’s quite easy
> to see the “open-vm-tools” are back again giving my mouse something that
> sends it in circles…

I thought we had everything worked out in the SLE12 environment - other than 
the gtkmm-2.4/3.0 issue. If there are any outstanding issues, I'd like to 
understand them and get a bug filed.

> If you kill the open-vm-tools and set it to never again darken your door,
> run the VMware tools again and reload then you have a mouse the is back
> under control and scripts that start and stop when asked.
 
> I do not understand what the open-vm-tools are there for. If you are running
> VMware software then you have their tools, which get updated quite often.
> If your not running VMware why would you want open-vm-tools ?

In theory, including the tools with the distribution should have helped users 
avoid the step of installing additional software after the installation has 
completed. If conflicts are continuing to be seen, we need to get them resolved 
or rethink this approach.

I'll do some testing today, but any further details you can provide (probably 
off-list) would be appreciated.

Thanks!
Mike