After creating a new virtual machine (VM) on VMware we need to install the VMware tools to configure the network etc. I have created a new VM on which I have installed the RHEL without a graphical interface so I need to install the VMware tools through the command line. Please follow the process given below to install the VMware tool on a Linux VM through the command line.
Install/Upgrade VMware Tools on RHEL
- Right Click on the VM and go to Guest >> Install/Upgrade VMware Tools
- VMware tools will be mounted on the VM at /dev/cdrom which you can not access directly.
- Now login to virtual machine (VM) as a root user and create a new directory /mnt/cdrom
[root@TestServer ~]# mkdir /mnt/cdrom - Mount the /dev/cdrom to newly created mount point
[root@TestServer ~]# mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom [root@TestServer ~]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdc 62M 62M 0 100% /mnt/cdrom[root@TestServer ~]# cd /mnt/cdrom
[root@TestServer cdrom]# ll
total 62915
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 1970 Aug 23 2014 manifest.txt
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 1850 Aug 23 2014 run_upgrader.sh
-r–r–r– 1 root root 63024310 Aug 23 2014 VMwareTools-9.4.10-2068191.tar.gz
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 693484 Aug 23 2014 vmware-tools-upgrader-32
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 702400 Aug 23 2014 vmware-tools-upgrader-64 - Copy the content to the temporary directory
[root@TestServer cdrom]# cp VMwareTools-9.4.10-2068191.tar.gz /tmp/ [root@TestServer cdrom]# cd /tmp
[root@TestServer tmp]# ll VMwareTools-9.4.10-2068191.tar.gz
-r–r–r– 1 root root 63024310 Jul 4 14:45 VMwareTools-9.4.10-2068191.tar.gz - Extract the *.tar.gz file and rum the .pl file
[root@TestServer tmp]# tar -xvzf VMwareTools-9.4.10-2068191.tar.gz [root@TestServer tmp]# ll
total 61628
-r–r–r– 1 root root 63024310 Jul 4 14:45 VMwareTools-9.4.10-2068191.tar.gz
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Aug 23 2014 vmware-tools-distrib[root@TestServer tmp]# cd vmware-tools-distrib
[root@TestServer vmware-tools-distrib]# ll
total 496
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Aug 23 2014 bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Aug 23 2014 doc
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Aug 23 2014 etc
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 265487 Aug 23 2014 FILES
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 2538 Aug 23 2014 INSTALL
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Aug 23 2014 installer
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Aug 23 2014 lib
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 197302 Aug 23 2014 vmware-install.pl - Run the .pl file and follow the instructions to install the VMware tool
[root@TestServer vmware-tools-distrib]# ./vmware-install.pl
Note: These activities performed on VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5.0 and RHEL 5.8.