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VMware Tools for Synology DSM

This is a port of the open-vm-tools implementation of VMware Tools to the Synology DSM platform.

Here you will find ready-built binary installable .spk-packages for Synology DSM, together with the necessary sources, should you choose to build it yourself.

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open-vm-tools

open-vm-tools is a set of services and modules that enable several features in VMware products for better management of, and seamless user interactions with, guest operating systems.

Specifically, this port enables interaction with a virtualised Synology DSM running as a VMware guest VM. A typical host runs the VMware ESXi hypervisor.

open-vm-tools is open source software released under GPL v2 and GPL v2 compatible licenses.

More information can be found at the official open-vm-tools source repository.

Synology DSM Package (.spk) Files

.spk-packages are found under the Release section. SPK releases track open-vm-tools versions from the upstream project.

Filenames are in the form

open-vm-tools_[Arch]-[DSM ver]_[open-vm-tools ver]-[build].spk

[Arch] is the CPU architecture supported by the package. Use the correct one that matches the intended Synology hardware model. This can be found in the official Synology knowledge base.

[DSM ver] is the minimum Synology DSM version supported by the package.

[open-vm-tools ver] is the open-vm-tools version matching the upstream releases.

[build] is the incremental build number. Get the latest available to benefit from more recent patches built from upstream hotfixes.

For example, to install open-vm-tools 11.2.5 on a Synology NAS model DS3615xs (Package Arch: Bromolow) running DSM 6.2, download a package file named open-vm-tools_bromolow-6.2_11.2.5-xx.spk which supports DSM versions 6.2 and above.

Build Tooling

Builds are created using the cross-compilation framework provided by the spksrc project from SynoCommunity.

spksrc is open source software released under the BSD license.

More information, including instructions to build this and many other projects relying on spksrc, can be found at the official SynoCommunity/spksrc source repository.

Compiling

Note: The open-vm-tools source data is not contained in this repository and you will not to have to download it manually as the required data will be downloaded on-the-fly while compiling.

The release builds provided here were compiled by using an Ubuntu Desktop 20.04 LTS VM on a VMware Workstation Player 16 type 2 hypervisor.

If you want to compile open-vm-tools for Synology DSM by yourself, do the following on a Ubuntu/Debian (or similiar) system, according to the following example (open-vm-tools 11.5.2 and apollolake/DSM 6.2 architecture):

1. Download the desired official open-vm-tools release:

cd ~/Downloads

wget https://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools/releases/download/stable-11.2.5/open-vm-tools-11.2.5-17337674.tar.gz

2. Create a temporary working directory...

mkdir -p ~/tmp/

...and push the following three checksums of the downloaded package into a .txt file (which we will use later) by executing:

shasum -a 1 ~/Downloads/open-vm-tools-11.2.5-17337674.tar.gz >> ~/tmp/checksums.txt

shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/open-vm-tools-11.2.5-17337674.tar.gz >> ~/tmp/checksums.txt

md5sum ~/Downloads/open-vm-tools-11.2.5-17337674.tar.gz >> ~/tmp/checksums.txt

Delete the .tar.gz-file:

rm -rf ~/Downloads/open-vm-tools-11.2.5-17337674.tar.gz

3. Install the following packages:

sudo apt-get install docker.io git nano

4. Clone the official "SynoCommunity" spksrc Github repository:

git clone https://github.com/SynoCommunity/spksrc ~/tmp/spksrc

5. Download the official "SynoCommunity" spksrc docker image:

sudo docker pull ghcr.io/synocommunity/spksrc (Note: do not pull synocommunity/spksrc as it is missing packages)

6. Clone the open-vm-tools build files:

git clone https://github.com/perrin-1/synology-dsm-open-vm-tools.git ~/tmp/open-vm-tools

7. Edit the following file which holds the according checksum files and replace all values with the previously generated checksums from ~/tmp/checksums.txt:

nano ~/tmp/open-vm-tools/cross/open-vm-tools/digests

Save the file and quit the editor.

8. Edit the following file and customize the values for the variables PKG_VERS and PKG_BUILD according to the open-vm-tools version you want to compile:

nano ~/tmp/open-vm-tools/cross/open-vm-tools/Makefile

Save the file and quit the editor.

9. Edit the following file and customize the value for the variable SPK_VERS according to the .spk-package version you want to generate and, if you want (optional), also for the variables MAINTAINER and CHANGELOG:

nano ~/tmp/open-vm-tools/spk/open-vm-tools/Makefile

Save the file and quit the editor.

10. Copy the open-vm-tools build files into the original "SynoCommunity" spksrc repository:

sudo cp -r ~/tmp/open-vm-tools/* ~/tmp/spksrc/

11. Run and prepare the spksrcdocker image:

sudo docker run -it -v ~/tmp/spksrc:/spksrc synocommunity/spksrc /bin/bash ghcr.io/synocommunity/spksrc

make setup

12. Install missing package sponge

The official synocommunity/spksrc docker container is missing the binary sponge. You need to install that for the build to finish: apt update apt install moreutils (there might be better ways to accomplish that, but this one works for me)

13. Compile:

cd /spksrc/spk/open-vm-tools/ && make arch-apollolake-7.0

Sidenote: Other common architectures could be:

arch-bromolow-6.2 or arch-bromolow-7.0

or

arch-broadwell-6.2 or arch-broadwell-7.0

or

arch-x64-6.2

Now quit the docker building environment:

exit

You can now find the compiled .spk-package here:

~/tmp/spksrc/packages

14. Install the compiled .spk-package on your Synology DSM system.

Done.