Contents

Installing VMware Tools in a Linux Guest Operating System

1. Power on the virtual machine.

   Note: If you have an older version of VMware Tools installed, terminate the running version before installing the new one.

2. When the guest operating system starts, prepare your virtual machine to install VMware Tools.

   Choose Settings > VMware Tools Install.

   Note: If you decide not to proceed with the installation of VMware Tools, you may cancel the operation by selecting Settings > Cancel VMware Tools Install.

   The remaining steps take place inside the virtual machine.

3. As root, open a terminal, 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. When you finish installing VMware Tools, this image file no longer appears in your CD-ROM drive.

   Some Linux distributions use different device names or organize the /dev directory differently. If your CD-ROM drive is not /dev/cdrom, modify the following commands to reflect the conventions used by your distribution.

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

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

   Note: When installing VMware Tools in some versions of Linux, the installer will need to recompile VMware Tools. For this to work, you will need to have a C compiler installed in the guest. In some cases you may get compiler warning messages during the VMware Tools installation. However, the control panel and drivers will still work correctly.

5. Do one of the following.

   • If you configured this virtual machine to use the vlance network driver, go to step 8.
   • If you configured this virtual machine to use the vmxnet network driver, test to be sure that the vmxnet driver is installed correctly.
     insmod vmxnet

6. If the driver is installed correctly, you see some informative output but no error messages. In addition, you should now have an entry such as alias eth0 vmxnet in the file /etc/modules.conf (or /etc/conf.modules in Red Hat Linux 6.2).

7. Start X and your graphical environment if they are not started yet.

8. In an X terminal, launch the VMware Tools background application.
   vmware-toolbox &

   You may run the VMware Tools background application as root or as a normal user. To shrink virtual disks, you should run VMware Tools as root.

Starting VMware Tools Automatically

You may find it helpful to configure your guest operating system so VMware Tools starts when you start your X server. The steps for doing so vary depending on your Linux distribution and the desktop environment you are running. Check your operating system documentation for the appropriate steps to take.

For example, in a Red Hat Linux 7.1 guest using GNOME, follow these steps.

1. Open the Startup Programs panel in the GNOME Control Center.
   Main Menu (the foot icon in the lower left corner of the screen) > Programs > Settings > Session > Startup Programs
2. Click Add….
3. In the Startup Command field, enter vmware-toolbox.
4. Click OK, click OK again, then close the GNOME Control Center.

The next time you start X, VMware Tools starts automatically.

Related Topics:

• Components of VMware Tools
• Setting preferences for VMware Tools

Back to top

© 2001-2002 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.