VMware is one of the best virtualization company. Especially in the desktop based virtualization it provides far more features than its competitors. VMware provides some tools to make virtualization experience more smooth. These tools are called VMware Tools. In this tutorial we will look how to install these tools into Linux distributions like Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Kali but this will work for Fedora, CentOS, RHEL too.

Mount Tool ISO into VM

VMware tools file or iso is provided over internet or with the VMware products like Workstations, Esxi etc. In this example we will mount from a VMware Workstation from VM ->Update VM Tools menu like below.

Copy and Extract VMwareTools-10.1.6-5214329.tar.gz To Desktop

We need to extract the tools which is in a tar.gz archive. So we will copy the files from cdrom to our desktop with the following command. Where cdrom is located at media

$ cp /media/ismail/VMware\ Tools/VMwareTools-10.1.6-5214329.tar.gz .

Then we will extract the archive with the tar command like below.

$ tar xvf VMwareTools-10.1.6-5214329.tar.gz

Where all extracted files will be put into directory named vmware-tools-distrib

Install Ifconfig

For Ubuntu, Debian, Mint and Kali distributions vmware tools have dependency for ifconfig command. ifconfig command is not installed for the recent versions of these distributions. We have to install ifconfig in order to complete vmware tools installation without problem.

$ sudo apt install net-tools

Start VMware Tools Installation

We will start vmware tools installation by executing vmware-install.pl with root privileges. Root privielges required because of command installation and kernel compilation. The kernel will be compiled with the vmware tools and drivers automatically by this installation procedure.

$ sudo ./vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl

After this step there will be a lot of questions about installation just push enter to accepts defaults.

You have a version of VMware Tools installed. Continuing this install will
first uninstall the currently installed version. Do you wish to continue?
(yes/no) [yes]

Uninstalling the tar installation of VMware Tools.

Stopping services for VMware Tools



The removal of VMware Tools 10.1.6 build-5214329 for Linux completed
successfully.

Installing VMware Tools.

In which directory do you want to install the binary files?
[/usr/bin]

What is the directory that contains the init directories (rc0.d/ to rc6.d/)?
[/etc]

What is the directory that contains the init scripts?
[/etc/init.d]

In which directory do you want to install the daemon files?
[/usr/sbin]

In which directory do you want to install the library files?
[/usr/lib/vmware-tools]

The path "/usr/lib/vmware-tools" does not exist currently. This program is
going to create it, including needed parent directories. Is this what you want?
[yes]



In which directory do you want to install the documentation files?
[/usr/share/doc/vmware-tools]
The path "/usr/share/doc/vmware-tools" does not exist currently. This program
is going to create it, including needed parent directories. Is this what you
want? [yes]
The installation of VMware Tools 10.1.6 build-5214329 for Linux completed
successfully. You can decide to remove this software from your system at any
time by invoking the following command: "/usr/bin/vmware-uninstall-tools.pl".

Before running VMware Tools for the first time, you need to configure it by
invoking the following command: "/usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl". Do you want
this program to invoke the command for you now? [yes]



You have chosen to install VMware Tools on top of an open-vm-tools package.
You will now be given the option to replace some commands provided by
open-vm-tools. Please note that if you replace any commands at this time and
later remove VMware Tools, it may be necessary to re-install the open-vm-tools.

WARNING: It appears your system is missing the required /usr/bin/vmhgfs-fuse

Initializing...



Making sure services for VMware Tools are stopped.



The module vmci has already been installed on this system by another installer
or package and will not be modified by this installer.

The module vsock has already been installed on this system by another installer
or package and will not be modified by this installer.

The module vmxnet3 has already been installed on this system by another
installer or package and will not be modified by this installer.

The module pvscsi has already been installed on this system by another
installer or package and will not be modified by this installer.

The module vmmemctl has already been installed on this system by another
installer or package and will not be modified by this installer.

The VMware Host-Guest Filesystem allows for shared folders between the host OS
and the guest OS in a Fusion or Workstation virtual environment. Do you wish
to enable this feature? [yes]

The vmxnet driver is no longer supported on kernels 3.3 and greater. Please
upgrade to a newer virtual NIC. (e.g., vmxnet3 or e1000e)

VMware automatic kernel modules enables automatic building and installation of
VMware kernel modules at boot that are not already present. This feature can
be enabled/disabled by re-running vmware-config-tools.pl.

Would you like to enable VMware automatic kernel modules?
[yes]

Thinprint provides driver-free printing. Do you wish to enable this feature?
[yes]

Creating a new initrd boot image for the kernel.
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.10.0-37-generic