Check Fusion virtual machines for VMWare Tools without booting

Batch scan log files of all VMWare Fusion virtual machines in ~/VMs to verify whether VMWare Tools is installed in each:

#!/bin/bash

VM_DIR="${HOME}/VMs"

printf "%-10s %-12s %-10s %s\n" "VM NAME" "STATUS" "VERSION" "LAST RUN"
printf "%-10s %-12s %-10s %s\n" "-------" "------" "-------" "--------"

find "$VM_DIR" -name "*.vmwarevm" -type d 2>/dev/null | sort -V | while read -r vm; do
    vmname=$(basename "$vm" .vmwarevm)
    logfile="$vm/vmware.log"

    if [[ ! -f "$logfile" ]]; then
        printf "%-10s %-12s %-10s %s\n" "$vmname" "Unknown" "-" "No log"
        continue
    fi

    # Extract version from log - this is the definitive indicator
    version=$(grep -oE "tools\.set\.version rpc call, version = [0-9]+" "$logfile" 2>/dev/null | \
              grep -oE "[0-9]+$" | tail -1)

    # Get last run timestamp
    last_run=$(grep -oE "^[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}" "$logfile" 2>/dev/null | tail -1)

    if [[ -n "$version" ]]; then
        status="Installed"
    else
        status="Not found"
        version="-"
    fi

    printf "%-10s %-12s %-10s %s\n" "$vmname" "$status" "$version" "$last_run"
done

Sample output:

VM NAME    STATUS       VERSION    LAST RUN
-------    ------       -------    --------
10.6       Installed    10252      2025-12-20
10.7       Installed    10252      2025-12-21
10.8       Installed    10252      2025-12-21
10.9       Not found    -          2025-12-21
10.10      Installed    10252      2025-12-21
10.11      Installed    12321      2025-12-21
10.12      Installed    12321      2025-12-23
10.13      Installed    12321      2025-12-21
10.14      Installed    12321      2025-12-22
10.15      Installed    12321      2025-12-28
11         Installed    12321      2025-12-28
12         Installed    12321      2025-12-28
13         Installed    12321      2025-12-28
14         Installed    12321      2025-12-28
15         Installed    12321      2025-12-21
26         Installed    12321      2025-12-21
XP         Installed    10252      2025-12-20

Attempting to install VMWare Tools via Virtual Machine → Install VMWare Tools in OS X Yosemite and earlier guests returns:

VMware Tools is no longer shipped with VMware Fusion for this guest operating system.

Download it from https://packages-prod.broadcom.com/tools/frozen/darwin/darwinPre15.iso and refer to https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?legacyId=1014294 for installation steps.

[OK]

For OS X El Capitan and later guests, the ISO link differs:

VMware Tools is no longer shipped with VMware Fusion for this guest operating system.

Download it from https://packages-prod.broadcom.com/tools/frozen/darwin/darwin.iso and refer to https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?legacyId=1014294 for installation steps.

[OK]

Check Darwin version via uname -r (returned 14.5.0 in OS X 10.10.5 and 15.6.0 in OS X 10.11.6).

darwinPre15.iso: 3004416 bytes, ef33fc5d152fd9db27cac0b1f21160226dfa5e5b7a501ffa25818682f3b4aaa0

darwin.iso: 3385344 bytes, f51c2b49e64e7fa2995bac5e509ace3d138c90ec15db78000bd864002ad42bae

❧ 2025-12-28