VMware : Install ESX tools for RHEL / CentOS Linux using YUM

By | December 21, 2011

To install VMware Tools from the ESX repository on RedHat/CentOS Linux guests using YUM, you need first to install the public key :

rpm --import http://packages.vmware.com/tools/keys/VMWARE-PACKAGING-GPG-RSA-KEY.pub

[Updated 06/03/12 : key URL has changed. Old location : http://packages.vmware.com/tools/VMWARE-PACKAGING-GPG-KEY.pub)]

Now, you need to create the repository file located in /etc/yum.repos.d :

vi /etc/yum.repos.d/vmware-tools.repo

And then, paste the following :

[vmware-tools]
name=VMware Tools for Red Hat Enterprise Linux $releasever – $basearch
baseurl=http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/<esx-version>/rhel<X>/<arch>
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1

At this point, you need to modify some stuff contain within < > according your needs :

<esx-version> = Your current ESX Server version where guests are running (such as 5.0p02 or 5.0)
<X> = Your guest OS version (such as rhel5 or rhel6)
<arch> = Your guest architecture (such as x86_64 or i386)

Hint : you may have a look at http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/ with your browser to discover folder names.

Okay, now let’s install VMware Tools :

yum install vmware-tools-services vmware-tools-esx-nox vmware-tools-pvscsi-common vmware-tools-plugins-autoUpgrade vmware-tools-plugins-guestInfo vmware-tools-plugins-powerOps vmware-tools-plugins-timeSync kmod-vmware-tools-vmxnet3 vmware-tools-vmxnet3-common