The Virtual Machine Overhead
In Ubuntu Linux, vmtoolsd is the core background daemon responsible for running VMware Tools (or Open VM Tools). If you have installed Ubuntu as a guest operating system inside a VMware hypervisor (like VMware Workstation, ESXi, or Fusion), this service is essential. It enables critical features like graceful shutdowns from the host, copy-and-paste between the host and guest, automatic screen resizing, and synchronized clocks.
However, if you have migrated an Ubuntu installation from a VMware virtual machine directly onto bare-metal hardware (a physical laptop or server), or if you have migrated it to a different hypervisor entirely (like KVM/Proxmox, Hyper-V, or VirtualBox), the vmtoolsd service is completely useless. It will start up on boot, realize it is not running inside a VMware environment, and either fail repeatedly or sit idle in the background consuming memory. To keep your system clean and optimize boot times, you should disable and remove this orphaned daemon.
How to Disable the Vmtoolsd Service
You can permanently stop and remove the VMware Tools daemon using apt and systemctl.
Warning: Only perform this if you are absolutely sure this Ubuntu installation is no longer running inside a VMware virtual machine.
- Open your Ubuntu Terminal or connect via SSH.
- Stop the active service if it is currently running:
sudo systemctl stop open-vm-tools.service- Disable the service to prevent it from starting automatically on the next boot:
sudo systemctl disable open-vm-tools.service- Because this service relies on kernel modules that are no longer needed, the best practice is to purge the package entirely rather than just disabling it:
sudo apt-get purge open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktopYour Ubuntu system will uninstall the VMware daemon, ensuring it never runs again and freeing up disk space and system resources on your non-VMware hardware.