I have been using open-vm-tools
, or the equivalent previous name of the package since Debian 5 or Debian 6 instead of the official VMWare tools, as they are less complicated to install and keep up, and have automatic security updates.
Right now I am using Stretch with open-vm-tools
10.1.5 with the kernel 4.9.0-3-amd64
.
I used to have installed linux kernel sources and dkms
for modules to be compiled for it, since we do disk paravirtualization and mainly network paravirtualization.
However, over time, the development packages, kernel sources and dkms stopped being necessary, also because I think, the linux kernel started being more "vmware-aware".
I still have here three Stretch i386 based VMs, with the kernels, 4.9.0-3-686-pae
, 4.8.0-2-amd64
and 4.8.0-2-686-pae
. They all have the build-essentials
and source module packages installed.
Interestingly enough, only the 4.8.0-2-amd64
has the module compiled at /lib/modules/*/updates/dkms/vmxnet.ko
.
Short of deleting packages and not being able to boot, how can I determine if that module is not needed or not?
Bonus question, when did it happen, kernel source and/or open-vm-tools
, that it was not mandatory anymore to compile modules, for having the open vmtools working?