The installation of vmware-tools under ESX2.x and RedFat5 is possible using the RedHat4 vmware-tools package. However you will get an error when it goes to build the kernel modules where the vmware installer will complain that the kernel headers do not match the running kernel.
include/linux/version.h format has been changed in later versions and no longer contains the variable UTS_RELEASE, which the vmware-config-tools.pl script is looking for. One may complete the compile successfully by adding back in the line that matches the current running kernel. To resolve this;
1) add kernel-headers package: # yum install kernel-headers
2) symlink correct kernel version to /usr/src/linux -> /usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-53.1.14.el5-i686
3) in /usr/src/linux/include/version -
#define UTS_RELEASE "2.6.18-53.1.14.el5"
4) run vmare-config-tools.pl as root, it should now work correctly.
How About some real support for RedHat 5 from VMWare? RHEL 5 has been out for almost 18 months as of this writting.