How to install VMware Tools?

_Andy · January 10, 2023, 8:13am

I’ve installed HA on my laptop under VMware. I’m using OpenHab, but I’ve heard good things about HA, so here I am.

I’m struggling to installed VMware Tools. Without that, HA kills the performance of my other VMs. I installed the SSH access. However, when I try to mount the CD, it tells me I’m not root. id says I am. Any idea why I can’t mount? I tried sudo, but that didn’t help.

I’m using VMware Workstation version 17.

Thanks, Andy

Tinkerer · January 10, 2023, 8:52am

Home Assistant OS uses Docker for … pretty much everything. When you SSH to the add-on, you’re SSHing into a Docker container.

I’m not aware of any official support for VMWare tools on HAOS, indeed there’s an open feature request for it.

_Andy · January 10, 2023, 8:22pm

I downloaded the VMWare machine from Linux - Home Assistant

I haven’t done much with docker. I use Linux almost exclusively. I’ll see if I can figure out why root isn’t root in docker. Very strange. The VMWare setup made it easy to give HA a try.

I’ll eventually install it on some other machine. I’m running OpenHab on a Raspberry PI 4. If I make the switch to HA, I’ll just reuse it. So far I’m liking HA, though I’m not to excited about YAML, I’d rather use python. Using a markup language for programming seems a bit odd and overly restrictive to me. But, I’m just leaning HA, so maybe it will grow on me. Thanks for your help.

boheme61 · January 10, 2023, 8:55pm

How does the VMware workstation GUI look like in Linux ?, under " Manage" Virtual Machine Settings ?

lasponger · August 24, 2023, 3:49pm

any luck on this? I’m running the hass OS VM on workstation 17 pro and would love to be able to suspend instead of having to shutdown every time I restart my machine, upgrade vmware workstation, etc…

aceindy · August 24, 2023, 6:12pm

OVA image HAS openvmtools, only not sure if it is the latest…

github.com

home-assistant/buildroot/blob/60aa896904c0d8a07d6fbbf7e90b7f9efd196678/package/openvmtools/openvmtools.mk

################################################################################
#
# openvmtools
#
################################################################################

OPENVMTOOLS_VERSION_MAJOR = 10.3.5
OPENVMTOOLS_VERSION = $(OPENVMTOOLS_VERSION_MAJOR)-10430147
OPENVMTOOLS_SITE = https://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools/releases/download/stable-$(OPENVMTOOLS_VERSION_MAJOR)
OPENVMTOOLS_SOURCE = open-vm-tools-$(OPENVMTOOLS_VERSION).tar.gz
OPENVMTOOLS_LICENSE = LGPL-2.1
OPENVMTOOLS_LICENSE_FILES = COPYING

# configure.ac is patched
OPENVMTOOLS_AUTORECONF = YES
OPENVMTOOLS_CONF_OPTS = --with-dnet \
	--without-icu --without-x --without-gtk2 \
	--without-gtkmm --without-kernel-modules \
	--disable-deploypkg --without-xerces
OPENVMTOOLS_CONF_ENV += \

This file has been truncated. show original

For sure power-down, suspend is not any issue
(using vmware workstation 17)

lasponger · January 18, 2024, 11:38pm

thanks for the response, apparently I missed the notification email until now.

so, I’m running the latest version of HOAS on vmware workstation 17.5 Pro and whenver I try to pause/suspend the vm, I get the following error:

If I hit the OK button on each of those, the vm is still active. If I immediately try to pause/suspend again, it pauses with no issues, but upon resuming, it gives another error screen:

there doesn’t seem to be any functional issues with the entire HA system post-resume, but given the size of my install, I’m concerned that there’s something wrong/ a bug in the open-vm-tools integration.

Is anyone else seeing this?

Lotus_Eater · January 26, 2024, 12:41pm

I’m seeing this. Did you ever figure it out?

rstolpe · February 17, 2024, 10:33am

They should update the version of VMware tools as the current version has security issues and are missing some drivers.

mirekmal · February 17, 2024, 4:22pm

Seems in meantime Open VM Tools were updated. Currently I have:
Screenshot 2024-02-17 at 17.19.18
I do not see issues like that, but I’m running HA on ESXi 8.0.

EDIT: Upon checking it also seems to be the most recent version available.