If you need a Solaris 8 (5.8) running on ESX server you may install OS without any error. But when you try to install VMware Tools after OS installation, strongly probable, you will get an error like this:
./vmware-install.pl
Setup is unable to find the “update_drv” program on your machine. Please make sure it is installed. Do you want to specify the location of this program by hand? [yes]
At this point do not try to locate update_drv on your disk “by hand”. Because you won’t find this at your Solaris 8.
update_drv was released with Solaris 9 included in SUNWcsu package.
But we know that Solaris 8 VM is being supported by vSphere 4.
So we opened a ticket to VMware about this issue. This is the answer of support request:
…according to this links as the guest os guide at the page 160, there is no VMware tools version supported under this version of Solaris 8 then unfortunately you won’t be able to install this package inside this VM.
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/GuestOS_guide.pdf
Solaris 8 is being supported within “experimental” logic yet. That’s why we can’t use VMware tools for Solaris 8.