Ubuntu Server 22.04 automatically installs open-vm-tools

kkyucon

1/24/24, 12:56 AM

When I apt update and apt dist-upgrade the process installs open-vm-tools package.

Why is open-vm-tools being installed on a bare-metal server?
Could it be a dependency that I am not aware of?
Is this package assumed by developers to be useful in most cases?

Here is the output from apt update:

Hit:1 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy InRelease
Get:2 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates InRelease [114 kB]     
Hit:3 https://downloads.plex.tv/repo/deb public InRelease                      
Ign:4 http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge InRelease           
Get:5 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-backports InRelease [99.8 kB]
Hit:6 http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge Release
Get:7 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-security InRelease [110 kB]
Get:8 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates/main amd64 Packages [833 kB]
Get:10 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates/main amd64 c-n-f Metadata [12.2 kB]
Get:11 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates/universe amd64 Packages [789 kB]

And here is the output from apt dist-upgrade:

The following packages will be upgraded:
  libapache2-mod-php8.1 open-vm-tools openssh-client openssh-server
  openssh-sftp-server php8.1 php8.1-bcmath php8.1-bz2 php8.1-cgi php8.1-cli
  php8.1-common php8.1-curl php8.1-gd php8.1-gmp php8.1-intl php8.1-mbstring
  php8.1-mysql php8.1-opcache php8.1-readline php8.1-xml php8.1-zip
  python-apt-common python3-apt python3-pkg-resources python3-setuptools
  python3-software-properties software-properties-common webmin

1 + 0

updates

package-management

apt

Score:1

Ubuntu

user535733

1/24/24, 4:01 AM

Your first stop for questions like this should be to query apt.

Let's do that:

$ apt rdepends open-vm-tools
open-vm-tools
Reverse Depends:
  ...
  Recommends: ubuntu-server
  ...

Aha. There it is: Recommends: ubuntu-server. That's the metapackage pulling it in.

Now let's look at the Ubuntu server metapackage:

$ apt depends ubuntu-server
ubuntu-server
  ...
  Recommends: open-vm-tools
  ...

There it is, pulling in open-vm-tools.

Note that it's a "recommends", not a "depends", not a "suggests". Ubuntu's default setting is to pull in "depends" and "recommends" packages, and to exclude "suggests" packages. You can change that by consulting man apt and man apt-get

+ 0

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Ubuntu Server 22.04 automatically installs open-vm-tools

Post an answer

Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.