While doing a VMware tools check in my homelab I found a few Linux VMs with the message “Out of date“. These machines were from an old test and I recently started them again for some testing. My first idea on seeing the message was: ‘nothing wrong, I just run a PowerCLI script and everything will be updated‘. After running the script I noticed 3 test servers still being “Out of date” but in my task list the machines did receive the message “Initiated VMware Tools install or upgrade”. I ran the script again to see if it would fix the problem but the machines kept being “Out of date“. Time for a manual intervention!

I did a right click on the machine and noticed the following while running “Install/Upgrade VMware Tools“:

It gave me the idea that VMware tools had crashed or failed to run at boot so I logged on to the machines. Below is the output what happened after a status check and a stop and start.

server02:~# /etc/init.d/vmware-tools status
vmtoolsd is running
server02:~# /etc/init.d/vmware-tools stop
Stopping VMware Tools services in the virtual machine:
   Guest operating system daemon:                                      done
   Virtual Printing daemon:                                            done
   Unmounting HGFS shares:                                             done
   Guest filesystem driver:                                            done
   Guest memory manager:                                               done
   VM communication interface socket family:                           done
   VM communication interface:                                         done
server02:~# /etc/init.d/vmware-tools start
   Checking acpi hot plug                                              done
Starting VMware Tools services in the virtual machine:
   Switching to guest configuration:                                   done
   Guest memory manager:                                              failed
   VM communication interface:                                        failed
   VM communication interface socket family:                          failed
   Guest operating system daemon:                                      done
   Virtual Printing daemon:                                            done

As u can see, 3 services failed so I probably had to reinstall the whole package.

Another right click on the machine with the idea to run “Install/Upgrade VMware Tools” and suddenly I got the following screen:

I could select “Automatic Tools Upgrade” and after waiting for a few minutes for the installer the status changed from “Out of date” to “OK”.

Problem solved and everything is up to date again!