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Installing VMware Tools in a FreeBSD Guest Operating System

VMware Tools for FreeBSD include:

• The X server to run in a virtual machine for SVGA display modes.
• The vmware-toolbox program to access virtual machine settings from the guest operating system.

To install VMware Tools for FreeBSD:

1. Power on the virtual machine.
2. Prepare your virtual machine to install VMware Tools by selecting Settings > VMware Tools Install. This step connects the virtual machine’s CD-ROM drive to an ISO image file on the ESX Server machine.

   Note: The following steps all take place inside the virtual machine, not on the host computer.

3. As root, mount the VMware Tools virtual CD-ROM image, copy its contents to /tmp, then unmount it:

   Note: You do not use an actual CD-ROM to install VMware Tools, nor do you need to download the CD-ROM image or burn a physical CD-ROM of this image file. The VMware ESX Server software contains an ISO image that looks like a CD-ROM to your guest operating system. This image contains all the files needed to install VMware Tools in your guest operating system.

   su
   cd /
   mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt
   cp /mnt/vmware-freebsd-tools.tar.gz /tmp
   umount /dev/fd0

4. Untar the VMware Tools tar file in /tmp and install it:
   cd /tmp
   tar zxf vmware-freebsd-tools.tar.gz
   cd vmware-freebsd-tools
   ./install.pl

5. Start X and your graphical environment if they are not started yet.
6. In an X terminal, launch the VMware Tools background application:
   vmware-toolbox &

You may run VMware Tools as root or as a normal user. To shrink virtual disks, you should run VMware Tools as root (su -).

By default, the resolution of the X server is set to the resolution of the screen as determined at install time. If you wish to change this, you can edit the configuration file.

To configure the X server for different resolution:

1. Locate the XF86Config file. This file stores X server configuration information and is typically located in the directory /etc/X11, or sometimes in /etc.
2. Look for the line:
      Section "Screen"
   and under this is a line that sets the resolution:
       Modes "1280x1024"

3. Change this line to the desired resolution. There are several example mode lines, which are commented out.

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