VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtual machine’s guest operating system and improves management of the virtual machine. VMware Tools allows the guest operating system to interact with the host operating system. For example, VMware Tools allows the host operating system to share clipboard data with the VM guest operating system.
VMware Tools features:
- low video resolution
- inadequate color depth
- incorrect display of network speed
- restricted movement of the mouse
- inability to copy and paste and drag-and-drop files
- missing sound
Install VMware Tools on Ubuntu
1. After your Ubuntu VM boots up and you have logged in, from the VMware menu choose VM > Install VMware Tools.
2. Now you will see the VMware Tools ISO is mounted. Open it and you will see VMwareTools-xxxxx.tar.gz. Extract it to your Desktop for now (you can delete it later).
3. Install the requirements:
apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential gcc4. Open your terminal with root or use sudo:
cd /home//Desktop/vmware-tools-distrib/
./vmware-install.pl5. Follow the wizard and give the default answers. It will take around 20 minutes to finish the installation.
6. After that reboot your Ubuntu. Now you have VMware Tools installed.
FAQ:
Q: I am stuck at “what is the location of the directory of C header files?”. How can I resolve that?
A: Usually the C header file is in /usr/src/linux-headers-/include. But when I tried to install it on Ubuntu 10.10 it said “The path “/usr/src/linux-headers-/include” is not a valid path.” That is fine — just skip that step by answering no change to the path. It installed just fine.