This should work with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and 11.10 server.
Unlike window VM within the vSphere window, adding VMTools requires just a little work. This install requires the ‘build-tools’ packages be installed if not already present.
“apt-get install linux-headers-server build-essential”
1) On the host to be updated, select the “Install/Upgrade VMware Tools” menu selection from the menu. This will make the VMWare tools ISO available to the host.
2) Make sure you update the server.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
3) Create a mount point
sudo mkdir -p /media/cdrom
4) Mount the VMWare Tools ISO
sudo mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom
5) CD into the new mount
cd /media/cdrom
6) Copy the VM*.tar file to a temporary directory.
sudo cp VM*.tar.gz /temp
7) CD to the temp folder
cd /temp
8) Unmount the ISO, we are done with it.
sudo umount /media/cdrom
9) Extract the TAR file
sudo tar xzvf VM*.tar.gz
10) CD into the new vmware tools folder
cd vmware-tools-distrib
11) If you are on Ubuntu 11.10, you should create a /usr/lib64 directory to get around an error in the install script.
sudo mkdir /usr/lib64
12) Run the install script. Note that the -d flag will ‘auto-answer’ all questions with the default. Omit the -d if you want to answer each manually.
sudo ./vmware-install.pl -d
13) Reboot to complete.
sudo shutdown -r now
