I read an article in the vmware community that they are located in a directory within this: imagedd.bz2
I uncompressed it but only found a single file.
file imagedd
imagedd: x86 boot sector; partition 1: ID=0x5, starthead 0, startsector 8192, 1835008 sectors; partition 4: ID=0x4, active, starthead 1, startsector 32, 8160 sectors
What am I missing, am I even close?
I also see this:
On ESXi hosts, VMware Tools are available from a storage partition so administrators can install or upgrade them using the vSphere Client.
I'm not sure I understand the question. Are you asking where VMTools is located on the ESX Hosts? I believe that are mounted as iso from this directory:
/vmimages/tools-isoimages
It's a ISO file.
Export to Windows and use a tool to open it, or export to a Linux box and mount with -o loop.
Andre
Usually you will select "Install VMware Tools" to install the VMware Tools on a guest operating system. This will attach the ISO file according to the installed/selected OS. Depending on the OS and/or settings you may need to start the installation process manually.
If you are just looking for the installation packages themselves and you don't want to extract them, you can download them from http://packages.vmware.com/tools or http://www.vmware.com/download/packages.html
André