I'd been frustrated by the fact that I could never seem to get the VMware tools to install in my Turnkey Linux - Ubuntu based Drupal Appliance running on ESX.

I finally came across an article on how to do it. By substituting a few key commands was able to make it work. I tested it successfully on both ESX 3.5u4 and ESXi 4.0 so far

As always, a full backup before attempting any of this is recommended. Highly!

The very first thing to do after install of the system is to check that it is up to date. This is done by running:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Installing VMware Tools VMWare Tools will allow for better control of the appliance by the VMware environment, so it is a pretty good idea to set it up.

For Ubuntu 8.04 you will have to get VmwareTools version 6.0.3 or later, 6.0.2 won't compile.

I set up a test environment way back to be able to test the higher-end features of VMware vSphere 4 as well as ESX 3.5.

By setting up a physical level cluster for the ESX hosts themselves, I was able to perform  vMotion and Storage vMotion migrations with no problems.

I used 3 different ESX hosts. One was a Dell 2900 server; the other two were my own whitebox creations using nVidia 680i motherboards as the core.  You can find my recommendation for the 680i use on the VMware site here: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-11710