How to detect, in the guest operating system, if the vmware tools are out of date?

Solution 1:

I don't bother checking VMware tools versions on my Linux guest virtual machines now with the frequency of updates to ESXi and vSphere.

I'm a heavy proponent of VMware Operating System Specific Packages (OSPs).

This allows me to handle VMware guest tools independently of the host and control updates/installation at the Linux package manager level. I think it's a better way because I can also get newer tools to my guest VMs in situations where the vSphere infrastructure is older (e.g. version 4.1).

For instance, in Red Hat and CentOS, I just add the following in my routine to install guest tools:

# rpm -ivh http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/5.1/repos/vmware-tools-repo-RHEL6-9.0.0-2.x86_64.rpm
# yum -y install vmware-tools-esx-kmods vmware-tools-esx

The result is cleaner and easier to manage than manual tools updates from the vCenter or vSphere client level.