Installation guide

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VMware ESX Server Administration Guide
• Execute commands in the virtual machine when it is requested to halt or reboot
the guest operating system. See Executing Commands When ESX Server
Requests the Guest Service to Halt or Reboot a Virtual Machine on page 54.
• Pass a string from the service console to the guest operating system. See Passing
a String from the Service Console to the Guest Operating System on page 54.
• Send a heartbeat to VMware ESX Server so that it knows the guest operating
system is running.
The guest service starts automatically when you boot the guest operating system.
In a Linux guest, the guest service is called vmware-guestd. To display help about
the guest service, including a list of all options, use the following command:
/etc/vmware/vmware-guestd --help
In a Windows guest, the guest service program file is called VMwareService.exe.
To display help, right-click the VMware Tools icon in the system tray and choose Help.
Synchronizing the Time Between the Guest and Service Consoles
The guest service can synchronize the date and time in the guest operating system
with the time in the service console once every second. In the VMware Tools control
panel, on the Other tab (Options in a Linux guest), select Time synchronization
between the virtual machine and the host operating system.
In addition, the guest service can synchronize the date and time in the guest with the
service console in response to various system events — for example, when you
resume from disk. You can disable this in the configuration file by setting:
time.synchronize.resume.disk = FALSE