How to Install VMware Tools in Ubuntu 18.04
VMware allows us to run more than OS operating systems on a single machine providing virtualization. We use VMWare Tools to enhance the performance of the virtual machine.
VMware Tools provide functionalities such as faster graphics performance, shared folders, shared clipboard, drag and drop operations, etc. We can install VMware Tools in Ubuntu using the Open VM Tools and VMware Tools ISO File.
Install VMware Tools Using Open VM Tools
We can install VMware Tools on Ubuntu guests by installing Open VM Tools packages from the Ubuntu repository.
We execute the following commands to install VMware Tools using Open VM Tools.
sudo apt update
sudo apt install open-vm-tools
It firstly updates the repository and then downloads the open-vm-tools package from the updated repository.
However, if we are using an Ubuntu Desktop, we should execute the following commands to install the open-vm-tools package.
sudo apt update
sudo apt install open-vm-tools-desktop
Suppose a newer version of the open-vm-tools package is available on the repository. In that case, we can update the existing version of the open-vm-tools package using the following commands.
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
Install VMware Tools Using VMware Tools ISO File
We can also install VMware Tools using the Image ISO File located on the host machine. We perform the following steps sequentially to install VMware Tools Using VMware Tools ISO File.
-
Open the VMware Workstation, Fusion, or Player and the start the Ubuntu guest Virtual Machine.
-
Click on
Virtual Machineand then onInstall VMware Toolsfrom the VMware menu. it will prompt us to download VMWare Tools if we are using VMWare player. -
Create a new directory as a mount point for the CD drive and then mount the ISO File using the command:
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/cdrom sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom -
Go to the directory created in the previous step and then extract the VMwareTools files that include VMware Tools installers using the command:
cd /mnt/cdrom sudo tar xf VMwareTools-*.tar.gz -C /tmp -
Now run the
vmware-install.plscript using the command to install VMware Tools.sudo /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl -dHere,
-drepresents the installer will use default options. -
Finally, to observe the changes, we reboot the Ubuntu guest using the command:
sudo shutdown -r now
Suraj Joshi is a backend software engineer at Matrice.ai.
LinkedIn