Autofit guest and copy/paste no longer working, cannot uninstall open-vm-tools-desktop due to run-vmblock issue

[bma8018]

As title says guest tools functionality had been wonky for a while so I decided to reinstall open-vm-tools/desktop, now apt remove errors out with:

Removing open-vm-tools-desktop (2:10.1.10-1kali3) ...
Failed to stop run-vmblockx2dfuse.mount: Unit run-vmblockx2dfuse.mount not loaded.
dpkg: error processing package open-vm-tools-desktop (--remove):
 subprocess installed pre-removal script returned error exit status 5
Failed to preset unit: Unit file run-vmblockx2dfuse.mount does not exist.
/usr/bin/deb-systemd-helper: error: systemctl preset failed on run-vmblockx2dfuse.mount: No such file or directory
Failed to get unit file state for run-vmblockx2dfuse.mount: No such file or directory
run-vmblockx2dfuse.mount is a disabled or a static unit, not starting it.
Errors were encountered while processing:
 open-vm-tools-desktop
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

First encountered the issue with 10.1.10, tried updating to 15 which I can do successfully but the issue persists.

[userID401]

Same issue here, how can I completely uninstall open-vm-tools? Thanks!

[ghost]

Hi,

Any news?

[stanguturi]

Please check https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/open-vm-tools/+bug/1639222 The issue (during the installation) was already reported and Ubuntu 17.10 should have the fix. What distro are you using?

[oliverkurth]

The issue is not yet fixed in Ubuntu or Debian. I just reported the issue at Debian (upstream for Ubuntu): https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=886191

@userID401 you can uninstall the package by editing the file /var/lib/dpkg/info/open-vm-tools-desktop.prerm to remove the quotes:

#!/bin/sh
set -e

# workaround to avoid upgrade failures.
pkill -USR1 -f '(vmtoolsd.*vmusr|vmware-user)' || true

if [ -d /run/systemd/system ]; then
    deb-systemd-invoke stop run-vmblock\\x2dfuse.mount >/dev/null || true
fi

# Automatically added by dh_systemd_start/10.9.2
if [ -d /run/systemd/system ] && [ "$1" = remove ]; then
#       deb-systemd-invoke stop 'run-vmblock\\x2dfuse.mount' >/dev/null          <----- original line
        deb-systemd-invoke stop run-vmblock\\x2dfuse.mount >/dev/null
fi
# End automatically added section

However, the package issue is not related to any issues with autofit guest and copy/paste. Can you elaborate what those issues are? Do you have the vmusr process of vmtoolsd running when logged into the GUI? You can check with 'ps', it should like this:

vmware@debian:~$ ps awx | grep vmtoo
   412 ?        Ssl    0:00 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
  1247 tty2     S+     0:01 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd -n vmusr
  1576 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep vmtoo
vmware@debian:~$ 

[ghost]

Autofit guest and copy/paste no longer working

I have some issue also, on the Kali Linux 2017.3 and VMware Fusion 10.1.1

root@kali:~# ps awx | grep vmtoo
   301 ?        Ssl    0:00 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
  1142 tty2     S+     0:00 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd -n vmusr
  1361 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep vmtoo

apt list | grep open-vm

open-vm-tools/kali-rolling,now 2:10.1.15-1 amd64 [installed]
open-vm-tools-desktop/kali-rolling,now 2:10.1.15-1 amd64 [installed]
open-vm-tools-dev/kali-rolling 2:10.1.15-1 amd64
open-vm-tools-dkms/kali-rolling 2:10.1.15-1 all

[notoriousturtle]

@aekv for what its worth, same issue. I was able to remove it with @oliverkurth's solution, but that doesn't help get copy and pasta working!

[oliverkurth]

As long as the bugs at Debian and Ubuntu aren't fixed, you can enable and start vmblock-fuse manually:

sudo systemctl enable run-vmblock\\x2dfuse.mount
sudo systemctl start run-vmblock\\x2dfuse.mount

Check the status with
sudo systemctl status run-vmblock\\x2dfuse.mount