Gorillapond Dot Com

I’ve had a really hard time trying to find the way to get VMware Tools on Linux virtual machines, but I’ve got it down to just a few steps. If you’re using a ‘big name’ distribution with a graphical interface, it’s not hard to install. But, I like to use Debian or Ubuntu, without X11 (the aforementioned “graphical interface”), so it’s a pain in the butt.

How to install Vmware Tools on Ubuntu without X11:

1. Install Ubuntu Server
2. Login
3. Create a root shell:sudo bash
4. Update your sources:apt-get update
5. Upgrade your installed packages (dist-upgrade to force kernel upgrade):apt-get dist-upgrade
6. Reboot
7. Create a root shell again:sudo bash
8. Install packages VMware Tools needs:apt-get install linux-headers-server build-essential
9. Install VMware tools
10. Mount the VMware Tools CD ISO:mount /cdrom
11. Copy VMware Tools to home:cp /cdrom/VmwareTools-x.x.x-xxxxx.tar.gz ~
12. Go home:cd ~
13. Untar/Gzip the install:tar -zxf VmwareTools-x.x.x-xxxxx.tar.gz
14. Go into the resulting directory:cd vmware-tools-distrib
15. Start the installer:./vmware-install.pl
16. Install will ask you questions, the defaults should work fine.
17. Remove the basic AMD PCnet module (if you get errors about building the ethernet driver, run this command and start at step 14 again):rmmod pcnet32
18. Rebuild module dependancies:depmod -a
19. Install the VMware accelerated network interface:modprobe vmxnet
20. Restart network service:/etc/init.d/networking restart
21. Reboot