How-to Install VMware Tools on Ubuntu

How-to Install VMware Tools in Ubuntu if you're new and don't know the basic Linux commands? Just follow this article and the video. In this video you'll see the two approaches of installing VMware Tools in Ubuntu based systems. First of all, the demo video from VMware KBTV shows the process while running the Ubuntu VM through VMware Fusion, so the process of mounting the VMware Tools is slightly different when using the vSphere client, but the rest of the process is the same. The second part video shows the steps needed to install VMware tools in Ubuntu Server based VM.

I really like the KB videos produced by VMware KBTV because they're really good and can help out people starting with virtualization. And installing VMware tools is not obvious when you're new to this. For more experienced users this does not bring much knowledge, I know, but the're not targeted. The article is here to help new people. The video uses Ubuntu desktop 12.04 while the latest Ubuntu is 12.10, but the process is the same.

The video is quite helpful in if you want to see and remember the commands which you need to know when creating a directory for the mount, and mounting the CD ROM. Note that the video is going quite fast so if you need some of those commands I wrote them here.

• First, choose menu VM > “Install VMware Tools” through vSphere Client (or if you're running Workstation or Fusion then menu Virtual Machine > “Install VMware Tools”.
• Copy the VMware-tools-distrib folder on the desktop

Through the command window, first create a directory and mount

• sudo mkdir /mnt/cdrom
• sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

Then you just basically need to extract the content of the VMware tools CD into a temp folder and then use the this command:

• tar xzvf /mnt/cdrom VMwareTools-9.2.2-893683.tar.gz -g /tmp

and then:

• sudo ./vmware-install.pl -d  

NOTE: the -d is for accepting the defaults (so you don't have to re-validate each of those….).

Yes, the video is an excellent for learning the basics.

If you're installing VMware Tools for Ubuntu server, the process is almost the same, but there is no GUI.

How-to Install VMware Tools in Ubuntu Server :

• The steps are basically the same. After creating the directory for mounting the CD-ROM > mount the CD ROM > Extract to temporary folder – Here is the screenshot.

• then run the ./vmware-install.pl -d command with elevated priviledges.

• Do a sudo reboot

Source:  VMware KB article 1022525