I ran into this today and thought I would document it somewhere. In trying to save space on an ESX host, I wiped out (almost) everything in the tools-isoimages directory. I didn’t realize what I had done until I tried to install VMWare Tools on a few new machines I created. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if I had only deleted the iso on one of the two ESX hosts I maintain, but I managed to wipe both — yay! In order to replace the ISO file, it’s necessary to extract the file(s) from the RPM directory on the ESX installation media.
- Mount the ESX ISO file (or insert the CD) into a machine that has file system access to the ESX host. (I use Veeam Backup and FastSCP for transferring files)
- Navigate to the the VMWare/RPMS directory
- Transfer the VMWare-esx-tools-%version%.rpm file to the ESX host
- SSH into the host and navigate to the RPM location. I stuck mine in the tools-isoimages directory just to make it easier on myself
- Replace the tools package by running the command rpm -i %file.rpm% –replacepkgs where %file.rpm% is the name of the RPM file.
- If everything works, you will be put back at the command prompt and a few new .iso files will be present in your tools-isoimages directory
- Attempt to install VMWare Tools on your host and all should be well
- If you were as adept as me, copy the Windows.iso and Windows.iso.sig to the other host you hosed!
I hope this helps someone out there!
