Update Vendor tools on existing installations (e.g. VMWare open-vm.tools)

[t-lo]

The Flatcar Container Linux VMWare image ships with VMWare guest tools. However, when updating Flatcar Container Linux, the guest tools are not updated even if a newer version is shipped with the Flatcar update.

Note that VMWare maintains a knowledge base article on this issue that includes a workaround: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2142569

[pothos]

I tried to reproduce it but after two updates the /usr/share/oem files were still there and the vmtoolsd.service running. Which files disappeared in which scenario?

[t-lo]

I've updated the issue title and description as I received more information from the original reporter. Please pardon the confusion:

My recollection of the open-vm-tools problem is the following… If a customer initially installs certain version of CoreOS (that includes open-vm-tools version A) and performs one or more upgrades of CoreOS to a future version of CoreOS (that includes open-vm-tools B), open-vm-tools is never updated and remains at version A. It is desirable for open-vm-tools to get updated through OS vendors maintenance process.

[pothos]

OEM partitions are not updated as far as I know.

[t-lo]

We might want to turn this into a feature request then.

[pothos]

I would rather look into moving OEM partition contents to a container image run by a service we ship in /usr so that we can use the current update mechanism to bump container image versions.