How To Install vmfs-tools on Ubuntu 20.04
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install vmfs-tools on Ubuntu 20.04.
What is vmfs-tools
vmfs-tools is:
VMFS is a clustered filesystem designed to store virtual machine disks for VMware ESX or ESXi Server hosts. This set of tools allows to access these filesystems from some other non ESX/ESXi host for e.g. maintenance tasks.
Only read access is available at the moment, but write access is under works. Multiple extents are supported.
The VMFS can be accessed with a command line tool or mounted through a userspace filesystem (FUSE-based).
There are three methods to install vmfs-tools on Ubuntu 20.04. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.
Install vmfs-tools Using apt-get
Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.
sudo apt-get update
After updating apt database, We can install vmfs-tools using apt-get by running the following command:
sudo apt-get -y install vmfs-tools
Install vmfs-tools Using apt
Update apt database with apt using the following command.
sudo apt update
After updating apt database, We can install vmfs-tools using apt by running the following command:
sudo apt -y install vmfs-tools
Install vmfs-tools Using aptitude
If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.
sudo aptitude update
After updating apt database, We can install vmfs-tools using aptitude by running the following command:
sudo aptitude -y install vmfs-tools
How To Uninstall vmfs-tools on Ubuntu 20.04
To uninstall only the vmfs-tools package we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get remove vmfs-tools
Uninstall vmfs-tools And Its Dependencies
To uninstall vmfs-tools and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 20.04, we can use the command below:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove vmfs-tools
Remove vmfs-tools Configurations and Data
To remove vmfs-tools configuration and data from Ubuntu 20.04 we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y purge vmfs-tools
Remove vmfs-tools configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
We can use the following command to remove vmfs-tools configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge vmfs-tools
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install vmfs-tools package on Ubuntu 20.04 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.
