Install VMWare Tools

Installing VMware Tools

The following procedure shows how to extract and install the VMware Tools image from the VMware Workstation "tarball" (.tar.gz file).

Is it legal to do this? According to this thread, yes.

1. Download the latest "Archived Version" of VMware Workstation in .tar.gz format at http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/. You do not need to be registered nor have a VMware Workstation license key to download this version.

Example:
$ wget http://download3.vmware.com/software/wkst/VMware-workstation-5.5.0-18463.tar.gz

2. Locate and extract the linux.iso VMware Tools image from the tarball.

Locate the linux.iso file (example):
$ tar ztvf VMware-workstation-5.5.0-18463.tar.gz | grep linux.iso
vmware-distrib/lib/isoimages/linux.iso

Extract the linux.iso file (example):
$ tar zxvf VMware-workstation-5.5.0-18463.tar.gz vmware-distrib/lib/isoimages/linux.iso

3. Mount the linux.iso file as a loopback file system, and either share the loopback file system with Samba, or copy the VMware Tools files to a location accessible by your guest system.

$ mkdir /tmp/vmware_tools
$ mount -o loop linux.iso /tmp/vmware_tools

4. In your guest system, run vmware-install.py from the VMware Tools directory.