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Description of problem:

Open VMware Tools has native support for AARCH64 since version 11 (bc00152c1e5df9284eee2914062adaa3eb51a9f5) . Please include it in the Fedora/RHEL builds. Both EL7 and EL8 build and run successfully on ESXi VMs.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 11.0

How reproducible:
Every Time

If you change the ExclusiveArch to also include AARCH64, it builds fine and runs fine as long as:
* systemd is updated to include esxi-arm support (#1959148, #1959150)
* virt-what might also be a dependency. I've created a patch for esxi-arm support (#1959152, #1959154)

There is a workaround for the systemd issue, by removing the ConstraintVirtualization in the systemd unit (vmtoolsd.unit in the SRC.RPM), but I've created bug reports directly to Systemd and virt-what in order to have a proper fix and you can require a systemd > $nextVersion for aarch64.

There is an issue spamming the console with Unknown ioctl 1976 and I've linked to it, but it seems harmless and related to a vmci module that is not available.

Hi,

There are currently no plans to support AARCH64.

We will update this BZ if those plans change.

Thanks,

Cathy

Hi Cathy, Carl,

The systemd maintainers have added the prerequisite vmware support to 8.5 (#1959150). Rich did the same for virt-what (#1959154 for el8 and #1959174 for el9). The only missing piece of the puzzle seems to be open-vm-tools. Could you please reconsider this? If you need any QA help I will volunteer to help out.

Thanks,
R.

(In reply to Razvan Corneliu C.R. VILT from comment #2)
> Hi Cathy, Carl,
> 
> The systemd maintainers have added the prerequisite vmware support to 8.5
> (#1959150). Rich did the same for virt-what (#1959154 for el8 and #1959174
> for el9). The only missing piece of the puzzle seems to be open-vm-tools.
> Could you please reconsider this? If you need any QA help I will volunteer
> to help out.
> 
> Thanks,
> R.

Hi,

Unfortunately we will not be supporting open-vm-tools for AARCH64 in either RHEL7 or RHEL8. We do however suggest that you explore the SIG option [1] made available through CentOS as a way to get OVT AARCH64 support into the CentOS sources. 

[1] https://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup

 
Thanks,

Cathy