>>Tip: currently, you'll want to use VMWare's OVF conversion tool since there seems to be an issue with using the VMDK as-is.

I found the following information on the VMware forums after I had issue importing one of the ovf's and receiving the message "An error occurred while parsing the OVF descriptor: Unable to parse xml element 'Envelope'".

The VI Client for ESXi 3.5 only supports the preliminary OVF 0.9 standard. vSphere Client for ESXi 4 for supports OVF 1.0 and is backwards compatible, so packages in the 0.9 format can still be imported.

If you wish to import an OVF 1.0 package to an ESXi 3.5 host, you either need to use the OVF Tool 1.0 or use vSphere 4.0. For OVF Tool, the command-line will look like, e.g.,

ovftool c:\my.ovf vi://myEsxServer/

Full ovftool commands can be found at http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/ovf/ovf10/ovftool_10_userguide.pdf

My requirement for this was to be able to issue a soft shutdown request to any running appliances, when the host was shutting down. I have added the vmrun calls to my host boot and shutdown sequences.  Now, all vmware guests shut down cleanly, without requiring the admin to manually do it on every host server shutdown.

Reference on vmrun: http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/doc/ws_learning_cli_vmrun.html

create /etc/init.d/vmappliances.sh , with start|stop|restart, that issue vmrun commands
# chmod +x /etc/init.d/vmappliances.sh
# update-rc.d vmappliances.sh defaults

Found this excellent resource on upgrading VMWare Tools:

http://chrysaor.info/?page=faq#18

I had to make some slight modifications to get it to work with the VMWare Server image that TKL base is built on, but have it working now. This code is the work of the people at chrysaor.info, I am just pasting in my modified copy.

Assumptions: you have pointed your VM CD to your local (newer) copy of linux.iso

ubuntu804vmtools_tkl.sh

------  Begin script  -------

#!/bin/bash

echo "Installing some required stuff..."
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
apt-get install build-essential libgtk2.0-dev libproc-dev libdumbnet-dev xorg-dev psmisc linux-headers-`uname -r`

cd /tmp

echo "Downloading OpenVM Tools..."
wget http://content.wuala.com/contents/chrysaor.info/public/scriptcontent/ope...

echo "Downloading VMware Tools..."
# wget http://content.wuala.com/contents/chrysaor.info/public/scriptcontent/lin...
# mount -o loop linux.iso /media/cdrom
# cp /media/cdrom/VMware*.tar.gz /tmp
# umount /media/cdrom
mkdir /mnt/cdrom
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

echo -n "Unzipping archives..."
# tar xzvf VMware*.gz
# tar xzvf open-vm-tools.tar.gz
tar -xzpf /mnt/cdrom/VMWareTools-*
tar -xzvf open-vm-tools.tar.gz
umount /dev/cdrom

echo "Editing VMware Tools..."
cd open-vm-tools*/
# ./configure && make
./configure --disable-unity --without-icu && make
cd modules/linux/
for i in *; do mv ${i} ${i}-only; tar -cf ${i}.tar ${i}-only; done
cd ../../..
mv -f open-vm-tools*/modules/linux/*.tar vmware-tools-distrib/lib/modules/source/

echo "Installing VMware Tools..."
cd vmware-tools-distrib/
./vmware-install.pl

echo "Finished. You may now reboot."
echo "Please come visit us at http://chrysaor.info ."