How To Install VMware Tools on Ubuntu Server

VMware tools can be install using the open-vm-tools package. This will install X-server. If you do NOT wish to install X, see below:

Install VMware Tools Manually

Install the support packages VMware Tools needs:

apt-get install linux-headers-server build-essential

Choose “Install VMware tools” from within VMware Workstations. Mount the cdrom.

mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

Copy the VMware Tools tarball to your home directory

cp /media/cdrom/VMwareTools-8.8.0-471268.tar.gz ~

Change to your home directory

cd ~

Unzip the tarball

tar -zxf VMwareTools-8.8.0-471268.tar.gz

Change directories into the tarball directory

cd vmware-tools-distrib/

Begin the VMware Tools Install.

./vmware-install.pl

You will be asked a bunch of questions. The defaults should work for each. Adjust the kernel modules

rmmod pcnet32
depmod -a
modprobe vmxnet

Restart networking

/etc/init.d/networking restart

Reboot the VM.