VMWare Tools install in FreeNAS 9.3

[fatmcgav]

Evening all

I've just setup a new FreeNAS 9.3 VM on my home ESXi6 AIO box.

However I'm having issues getting vmware-tools installed...
Lots of the tutorials still reference 'pkg_add', which I believe is the old way of managing packages on FreeNAS/BSD...

However even if I try to use 'pkg', I dont get any luck... It looks like it's only using local pkg repositories, and not remote ones..

So does anyone know how I can get 'compat6x-amd64' installed in FreeNAS 9.3 so that I can get vmware-tools installed?

Cheers
Gavin

 

[SweetAndLow]

You don't install packages into FreeNAS. you get it the way it is. If you want to modify things people use jails to run their services but that isn't going to work for you I don't think.

 

[fatmcgav]

You don't install packages into FreeNAS. you get it the way it is. If you want to modify things people use jails to run their services but that isn't going to work for you I don't think.

OK... So there's no supported way of installing vmware tools to enable guest power control? And add support for VMXNET3 adapters?

Gav

 

[survive]

Hi fatmcgav,

I just checked one of my 9.3 filers & it has the open-vm-tools-nox11 package already installed. You might just need to add the commands (look into the "Tunable" section of the manual) to actually tell FreeNAS to start the VMware processes to start.

I feel I have a duty to say that running FreeNAS on ESXi has it's risks. You might want to confirm you are comfortable with them.

-Will

 

[Spearfoot]

I just re-installed FreeNAS (FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201506162331) today, and it does indeed install the VMware tools, but not the vmxnet3.ko driver. FreeNAS only installs these four drivers (in /usr/local/lib/vmware-tools/modules/drivers):

• vmblock.ko
• vmhgfs.ko
• vmmemctl.ko
• vmxnet.ko

I installed a copy of vmxnet3.ko I had earlier extracted from the VMware tools archive for ESXi 6 and loaded it with a tunable setting, along with vmmemctl.ko and vmxnet.ko:

But note that the folks at FreeNAS may have good reasons for leaving out the VMXNET3 driver, and you may be better off sticking with the E1000. My own testing shows that the VMXNET3 driver isn't a reliable VMware iSCSI datastore:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...eliable-under-heavy-load-with-mtu-9000.35014/

 

[dlavigne]

Also, that driver won't be installed with FN until 10.