Install VMware Tools in Ubuntu 18.04

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Introduction

VMware is a mature and stable virtualization solution that allows you to run multiple independent operating systems on one machine.

When using VMware as a hypervisor, installing VMware tools on the client is very important to improve the performance of the virtual machine. VMware tools provide some useful features, such as faster graphics performance, shared folders, shared clipboard, drag and drop operations, etc.
This tutorial explains how to install VMware Toolkit on the Ubuntu 18.04 client. The same instructions apply to Ubuntu 16.04 and any other Ubuntu-based distributions, including Linux Mint and Elementary OS

Install VMware Tools with Open VM Tools
The easiest and recommended way to install VMware tools on the Ubuntu client is to install the open VM toolkit from Ubuntu's default repositories.
Open VM Tools is an open source implementation of VMware Tools for Linux guest operating systems.

VMware tools are divided into two packages: open-vm-tools for headless systems and open-vm-tools-desktop for desktop systems. Depending on how the instance is provided, the Open VM Tools package may be installed by default.
Run the following command to install VMware tools on the Ubuntu server client:

sudo apt updatesudo apt install open-vm-tools

If you are running Ubuntu desktop version, install VMware tools and run:

sudo apt updatesudo apt install open-vm-tools-desktop

That's it. You have successfully installed VMware tools on your Ubuntu virtual machine.
When a new version of the Open VM tool is released, you can update the package through the desktop standard software update tool or run the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Install VMware Tools using the VMware Tools ISO file

VMware comes with an image ISO file that contains the VMware Tools installer for all supported guest operating systems. This file is located on the host and can be installed on the guest system from the VMware GUI menu. Once the installation is complete, you can start installing VMware tools on the guest system.

Below is the step-by-step instructions for installing VMware tools. These steps will work in both Ubuntu desktop and server client installations.

1、 Open VMware Workstation, Fusion or Player.

​2. Start the Ubuntu guest virtual machine.

​3. From the VMware menu, click "Virtual Machine" -> "Install VMware Tools..." -> as shown below:

If you are using VMware Player, you will be prompted to download VMware tools.

​4. Log in to the Ubuntu client as a sudo user, create a new directory as the mount point of the CD drive, and mount the ISO file:

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/cdromsudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

​5. Navigate to the directory and extract the VMwareTools-xxx-xxx.tar.gz file, which includes the VMwareTools installer:

cd /mnt/cdromsudo tar xf VMwareTools-*.tar.gz -C /tmp

​6. Run the vmware-install.pl script to install VMware tools:

sudo /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl -d

• The d option will tell the installer to accept the default options.

7、 Restart the Ubuntu client for the changes to take effect:

sudo shutdown -r now

to sum up

​Installing VMware tools on the ubuntu18.04 virtual machine is a simple task. VMware tools will optimize the guest operating system for better performance and enhanced availability.