Knowledge Base

Symptoms

• vmmemctl might not be loaded at startup.
   
• Configuring X Server during VMware Tools installation on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP4 32-bit and 64-bit virtual machines generates an error message:
  
  Fatal server error: no screens found.
   
• VMware Tools Help might not be displayed on Linux guest operating systems. In VMware Tools, clicking the Help button opens the Help file in a browser window. Clicking Contents generates the error message:
  
  File Not Found The file /usr/lib/vmware-tools/hlp/VMwareToolsHelpTOC.html cannot be found. Please check the location and try again.
   
• Clicking any link in the Help page generates the error message:
  
  An error occured while loading file:/usr/lib/vmware-tools/hlp/<xxx>.htm. The file or folder /usr/lib/vmware-tools/hlp/<xxx>.htm does not exist.
  
  
• VMware Tools installation on a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP2 virtual machine generates the error message:
  
  None of the pre-built modules vmmemctl modules for VMware tools is suitable for your running kernel. Do you want this program to try to build the vmmemctl modules for your system (you need to have a C compiler installed on your system? [yes]

Download Instructions

Download and verify the patch bundle as follows:

1. Download patch ESX-1005107 from http://www.vmware.com/download/vi/vi3_patches.html.
   
   
2. Log in to the ESX Server service console as root.
   
   
3. Create a local depot directory.
   
   # mkdir -p /var/updates
   
   Note: VMware recommends that you use the updates directory.
   
   
4. Change your working directory to /var/updates.
   
   # cd /var/updates
   
   
5. Download the tar file into the /var/updates directory.
   
   
6. Verify the integrity of the downloaded tar file:
   
   # md5sum ESX-1005107.tgz
   
   The md5 checksum output should match the following:
   
   8babd643f77594cbed9e2856eee5e49d ESX-1005107.tgz
   
   
7. Extract the compressed tar archive:
   
   # tar -xvzf ESX-1005107.tgz
   
   
8. Change to the newly created directory, /var/updates/ESX-1005107:
   
   # cd ESX-1005107

Installation Instructions

After you download and extract the archive, and if you are in the directory that you previously created, use the following command to install the update:

# esxupdate update

To run esxupdate from a different directory, you must specify the bundle path in the command:

# esxupdate -r file://<directory>/ESX-1005107 update

For example, if the host is called depot:

# esxupdate -r file:///depot/var/updates/ESX-1005107 update

During the update process, logs appear on the terminal. You can specify the verbosity of esxupdate logs by using the -v option as shown, below.

# esxupdate -v 10 file://<directory>/ESX-1005107 update

For more information on how to use esxupdate, see the Patch Management for ESX Server 3 tech note at http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx3_esxupdate.pdf.