How to install VMware Tools on CentOS VM

Last updated on July 8, 2014 by Dan Nanni

Would you like to install VMware Tools on a CentOS-running virtual machine (VM)? You can do so in less than five minutes. The following guide will show you how to install VMware Tools on CentOS VM created by VMware Player. The same procedure can be applied when you are using VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion as well.

First of all, turn on your CentOS VM.

If CD-ROM is connected to your VM, make sure to disconnect it first. For that, go to "Removable Devices" on VMware Player menu, choose CD/DVD, and click on Disconnect.

Once CD-ROM is disconnected, go to "Virtual Machine" on VMware Player menu, and click on “Install VMware Tools” option. This will make the media containing VMware Tools appear mounted as CD-ROM on the VM. Check if mount is successful, and where the mount point is, by running mount command.

$ mount

/dev/mapper/vg_livecd-lv_root on / type ext4 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,rootcontext="system_u:object_r:tmpfs_t:s0")
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext4 (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)
/dev/sr0 on /media/VMware Tools type iso9660 (ro,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks,uid=500,gid=500,iocharset=utf8,mode=0400,dmode=0500)

The last line of mount output indicates that "VMware Tools" is successfully mounted in "/media/VMware Tools" directory. Extract the compressed tarball of VMware Tools, and run an installation script inside.

$ tar -zxf /media/VMware Tools/VMwareTools-9.2.0-799703.tar.gz
$ cd vmware-tools-distrib
$ sudo ./vmware-install.pl --default

It will go ahead and install necessary utilities and kernel modules. Once installation is completed, reboot your VM.

Finally, to verify that VMware Tools is successfully installed, run the following command.

$ vmware-toolbox-cmd -v

9.2.0.15626 (build-799703)

If you want to install VMware Tools on Linux guest VMs created on VMware ESXi, you can refer to this tutorial.

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