Thanks all for the reply. With the help of GPT here is some output around the
tools the vm may have incorporated on install at the bottom.
If you look at the original video I provided you can see I literally arrive at
xfce for the first time after initial boot. This is after I install Trixie RC1
from the iso and go through the default steps. Then after a few Ctrl-C
keystrokes it crashes something and I can't use my mouse or keyboard, and worth
noting that these open-vm-tools below weren't installed manually by me. They
were already for me which I guess they come with Debian which Cyril seems to
have found they do in this message:
Seen in hw-detect's hw-detect.finish-install.d/08hw-detect:
case "$(detect_virt)" in
vmware)
if detect_desktop; then
apt-install --with-recommends open-vm-tools-desktop || true
else
apt-install --with-recommends open-vm-tools || true
fi
;;
Either way it might be worth trying out as if this is a pretty vanilla install
in a VM it may cause issues to wider community. Unless of course there is
something particularly funky with my external mouse and Trixie but its just a
cheap one I have used for years in my Kali VM's so likely not. Happy to help
more if required and provide more videos. Given it’s a VM I can rollback to
just after install and show it crashing quite easily.
❯ dpkg -l | grep open-vm-tools
ii open-vm-tools 2:12.5.0-2
amd64 Open VMware Tools for virtual machines hosted on VMware (CLI)
ii open-vm-tools-desktop 2:12.5.0-2
amd64 Open VMware Tools for virtual machines hosted on VMware (GUI)
❯ systemctl status open-vm-tools
● open-vm-tools.service - Service for virtual machines hosted on VMware
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/open-vm-tools.service; enabled; preset:
enabled)
Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/system/open-vm-tools.service.d
└─desktop.conf
Active: active (running) since Tue 2025-07-15 19:20:04 BST; 13h ago
Invocation: caefd7e3bb8c444a94989942bbf1100a
Docs: http://open-vm-tools.sourceforge.net/about.php
Process: 818 ExecStartPre=/sbin/modprobe vmwgfx (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 832 (vmtoolsd)
Tasks: 4 (limit: 11630)
Memory: 4.9M (peak: 8M)
CPU: 4.289s
CGroup: /system.slice/open-vm-tools.service
└─832 /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
❯ ps aux | grep vmtoolsd
root 832 0.1 0.1 113992 10068 ? Ssl 08:21 0:03
/usr/bin/vmtoolsd
david 4553 0.0 0.0 6532 2320 pts/3 S+ 08:56 0:00 |
| | \_ grep --color=auto vmtoolsd
david 1488 0.1 0.3 149596 39472 ? Sl 08:21 0:03
/usr/bin/vmtoolsd -n vmusr --blockFd 3
❯ lsmod | grep vmw
vmw_balloon 28672 0
vmw_vsock_virtio_transport_common 61440 1 vsock_loopback
vmw_vsock_vmci_transport 45056 2
vsock 61440 9
vmw_vsock_virtio_transport_common,vsock_loopback,vmw_vsock_vmci_transport
vmw_vmci 110592 2 vmw_balloon,vmw_vsock_vmci_transport
vmwgfx 466944 5
drm_ttm_helper 16384 2 vmwgfx
ttm 106496 2 vmwgfx,drm_ttm_helper
drm_kms_helper 253952 2 vmwgfx,drm_ttm_helper
drm 774144 10 vmwgfx,drm_kms_helper,drm_ttm_helper,ttm
