On ESXi 5.5, you try to update vmware tools on a guest VM, but receive the following error.
An error occurred while trying to access image file “/usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/linux.iso” needed to install VMware Tools
I followed KBA http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1037405 and opened a putty session to the ESXi host and ran the following commands.
- ls: /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/: No such file or directory
- /usr/lib/vmware # cd /
- mv locker /tmp
- ln -s store locker
- ls -la /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/
- ls: /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/: No such file or directory
vMotion the VM to another esxi host in the cluster. Try the vmware tools install/update again.
This worked, but there were other VMs on the original host that had the same error.
Use the VMware Tools Operating System Specific Packages (OSPs) https://www.vmware.com/support/packages for the specific build of the ESXi host running the guest VM.
The problem – This may not be a company standard and you don’t want to go down the route of one off’s.
It turns out the /store/packages/ only had 5.5.0 folder. After speaking to a few peers someone admitted they upgraded this host from 5.0 to 5.5 by mistake and then downgraded back to 5.0. The rest of the hosts in the cluster were 5.0.
- I removed the 5.5.0 folder in /store/packages/ (since there is not enough disk space for 5.0 and 5.5)
- Used winSCP to copy the 5.0 folder from /store/packages/ on a 5.0 host in the same cluster to the problematic host.
- ls -la /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/ command worked. The screen cap shows 5.5.0, but it was 5.0 when this happened.
- The VMware Tools install/update worked with an error on the rest of the VM’s on the esxi host.
