Install VMware Tools on Linux

A colleague asked me recently how to install VMware tools on a Linux virtual machine. Remember you should always consult the vendors documentation to confirm their preferred method for providing VMware tools type functionality. As well as the official VMware tools package you can also install the ‘Open VM Tools’ package.

Again – consult the documentation for your Linux/appliance product and make sure you select the right one.

The commands I use are listed below.

Installing VMware Tools

mkdir /mnt/cdrom
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
cp /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-*.tar.gz /tmp
tar -zxf /tmp/VMwareTools-*.tar.gz -C /tmp
cd /
./tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl --default
rm -f /tmp/VMwareTools-*.tar.gz
rm -rf /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib

Remember it may be necessary to use sudo for commands to complete.

Installing Open VM Tools

Assume we are using Ubuntu server as an example –

apt-get install open-vm-tools

Remember it may be necessary to use sudo for commands to complete.

References

Manually Install or Upgrade VMware Tools in a Linux Virtual Machine

VMware support of open-vm-tools (2073803)

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.