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Automating installation of VMware Tools for Mac OS X

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After publishing my recent article on automating the silent installation of VMware Tools for Linux guestOSes, I received a similar question regarding Mac OS X guests and whether the existing script would also apply. The answer is no since Mac OS X packages differ from the Linux installres, but it is possible to automate the installation of VMware Tools for Mac OS X guests.

After quickly looking into this, I realized there are actually several options that are available to customers and it would depend on how you would like to install VMware Tools and what platform you are running your Mac OS X guests on. I will share a couple of options which also includes existing solutions that have already been developed. At the end of the day, the choice will ultimately be up to the administrator on how he/she would like to proceed.

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vCenter Server 6.0 Tidbits Part 12: New methods of downloading Support Bundles for VCSA / PSC

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Many of you are probably pretty familiar with the process of generating a VMware Support bundle for vCenter Server when it comes to troubleshooting or filing an SR with VMware GSS by using either the vSphere Web/C# Client UI. With the released of vSphere 6.0 and specifically with the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) there are now some additional methods in generating a VMware Support bundle which can come in handy if the vSphere Web Client is not running or if you wish to perform this simply through the command-line on a remote system.

Screen Shot 2015-06-14 at 7.06.39 AM
The first option is simply by pointing your web browser to the following URL of your VCSA:

  • https://192.168.1.60/appliance/support-bundle

vcsa-support-bundle
You will be prompted to login with a local account such as the "root" user which ensures that there is no dependency that SSO must be running which is the case when using the vSphere Web Client. Once authenticated, the VMware Support bundle will be generated and you will then be able to download it onto your system. The VMware Support Bundle is in the format of a compressed tar file which you can use gzip or tar to extract.

The second option is simply using cURL or wget from the command-line which you will also need to provide valid credentials to download. Here is an example of using curl and we will be saving the file as "support-bundle.tar.gz":

curl -k -u root -o support-bundle.tar.gz -O https://192.168.1.60/applmgmt/support-bundle

Once we have downloaded the VMware Support bundle to our desktop, we can then extract it using a variety of tools such as tar for example:

tar -zxvf support-bundle.tar.gz

In situations when you need to quickly resolve a problem by providing support logs to VMware, time is of the essence and being able to quickly generate the necessary support files can help lead to a quick resolution. Hopefully these additional methods of generating a VMware Support Bundle can help save you time when you may need to call upon them.

Automating silent installation of VMware Tools on Linux w/Automatic Kernel Modules

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There was a recent question that was posted internally looking for a way to automate the silent installation of VMware Tools for Linux guest operating systems which also required enabling additional VMware Tools features like VMware's Automatic Kernel Modules. Currently, there are two options of installing VMware Tools for Linux guests, the first is by using VMware Tools Operating Specific Packages (OSPs) which can be found here or you can be manually install VMware Tools if an OSP does not exist or if you prefer to install interactively.

The second approach is what we will be focusing on and specifically with an emphasis on Automation 🙂 Once the VMware Tools installer is extracted, you will find a Perl script that does the actual magic called vmware-install.pl

Screen Shot 2015-06-17 at 8.13.19 AM
The VMware Tools installer supports two modes of installation:

  1. Interactive
  2. Unattended with VMware defaults

The second option sounds like what we want but the problem is that the defaults have already been pre-selected by VMware and they can not be changed as far as I know. To use this option, you would specify the following:

./vmware-install.pl -d default

Here is a complete working snippet that I shared awhile back which will completely automate the installation of VMware Tools using the "default" method and is the quickest way to install VMware Tools for Linux guestOSes:


mkdir -p /mnt/vmw-tools && mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/vmw-tools && VMW_TOOLS=$(ls /mnt/vmw-tools/ | grep .gz) && cp -f /mnt/vmw-tools/${VMW_TOOLS} /tmp/ && umount /mnt/vmw-tools && rmdir /mnt/vmw-tools && tar -zxvf /tmp/${VMW_TOOLS} -C /tmp/ && cd /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/ && ./vmware-install.pl -d default && rm -rf vmware-tools-distrib/ && rm -f /tmp/${VMW_TOOLS} && cd ~

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The solution above is great if you are okay with the defaults. However, if you wish to change any of the default settings such as the location of the installation or enabling additional VMware Tools capabilities, it is definitely not ideal. Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier these are the only two supported installation mechanisms. Now, just imagine you need to roll out a custom installation of VMware Tools and having to perform the installation manually, there must be a way right?

Luckily, there is and this is actually a trick that I have used for many installers which require some user interaction. Below is an updated script of performing a silent installation of VMware Tools, but instead of using the defaults I have created an "answer" file which contains the input that you would manually enter and redirecting that into the installer. In this particular case, I have left the system defaults in terms of the paths and documentation of where VMware Tools will be installed and focus on enabling additional capabilities such as VMware automatic kernel modules.

The last four lines in the answer file (no, no, yes, no) maps to the following VMware Tools capabilities:

  • VMware Host-Guest Filesystem
  • vmblock enables dragging or copying files
  • VMware automatic kernel modules
  • Guest Authentication

You can change these based on your requirements but the current script only enables "VMware automatic kernel modules". I think a great feature enhancement to the VMware Tools installer is the ability to accept a silent configuration file, so that this use case can be better supported and more resilient in case additional options are added.


#!/bin/bash
# Create temp workign directory
mkdir -p /mnt/vmw-tools
# Mount VMware Tools ISO
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/vmw-tools
# Retrieve the VMware Tools package name from the directory
VMW_TOOLS=$(ls /mnt/vmw-tools/ | grep .gz)
# Copy VMware Tools package to /tmp
cp -f /mnt/vmw-tools/${VMW_TOOLS} /tmp/
# Unmount the VMware Tools ISO
umount /mnt/vmw-tools
# Clean up and remove temp mount directory
rmdir /mnt/vmw-tools
# Extract VMware Tools installer to /tmp
tar -zxvf /tmp/${VMW_TOOLS} -C /tmp/
# Change into VMware Tools installer directory
cd /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/
# Create silent answer file for VMware Tools Installer
# If you wish to change which Kernel modules get installed
# The last four entries (no,no,yes,no) map to the following:
# VMware Host-Guest Filesystem
# vmblock enables dragging or copying files
# VMware automatic kernel modules
# Guest Authentication
# and you can also change the other params as well
cat > /tmp/answer << __ANSWER__
yes
/usr/bin
/etc
/etc/init.d
/usr/sbin
/usr/lib/vmware-tools
yes
/usr/share/doc/vmware-tools
yes
yes
no
no
yes
no
__ANSWER__
# Install VMware Tools and redirecting the silent instlal file
./vmware-install.pl < /tmp/answer
# Final clean up
rm -rf vmware-tools-distrib/
rm -f /tmp/${VMW_TOOLS}
cd ~

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