Failure to install VMware Tools: Cannot find the answer BINDIR in the installer database (1013159)

Details

If a VMware Tools installation is stopped before it can set the BINDIR (which occurs after the first prompted question), the installer is stopped prematurely and displays the following message:

A previous installation of VMware Tools has been detected.

The previous installation was made by the tar installer (version 4).

Keeping the tar4 installer database format.

You have a version of VMware Tools installed. Continuing this install will
first uninstall the currently installed version. Do you wish to continue?
(yes/no) [yes]

 

If you select yes, the following error message appears:

Error: Unable to find the binary installation directory (answer BINDIR)
in the installer database file "/etc/vmware-tools/locations".

Uninstall failed. Please correct the failure and re run the install.

Execution aborted.

Solution

To solve this issue, remove the /etc/vmware-tools/locations file and reinstall VMware Tools.


Link: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1013159