Most of my viewers end up here while searching for information about installing VMware Tools on Fedora. In this post, I'm going to go over the process for VMTools on Fedora18.
As usual, I'm including an overview of the steps first, then I'll dive into the specifics.
Overview
- Update your kernel and installed packages.
- Install perl, gcc, and kernel-devel.
- Start the VMTools install (from the vSphere client).
- Copy the VMTools package to your fedora VM.
- Extract the VMTools package to /tmp.
- Run the install script.
- Run the configure script.
The Step-by-Step Guide
Ok. Let's get into the details. Each step in the Overview will be described in detail here. It may be overkill for those of you who are familiar with Linux administration, but this guide is really intended to help those who don't work with Linux often.
Update your kernel and installed packages.
Fedora offers a GUI-based method for updating your kernel and packages, but I recommend using the command line for this. I've seen some problems with the GUI-based method getting stuck on dependencies and just hanging. So let's do the command line way.
First, open Terminal, and become root: su -
Next, use yum to find and install updates for your kernel and the packages that are currently installed on your system: yum -y update
NOTE: The command I'm referencing here will update ALL packages. I'm partial to keeping systems up-to-date, so this is the method I've developed. At a minimum, you'll want to update your kernel.
After your updates have installed, reboot your VM: reboot
Log in again, launch Terminal, and check for updates once more: yum -y update
You should see a message that says, "No package marked for update." That means your system is current, and we're ready for the next step.
Install gcc, perl, and kernel-devel
Now that your system is current, let's get three new packages that are required to install VMTools: gcc, perl, and kernel-devel.
gcc is a compiler, perl is a scripting language, and kernel-devel is a package that includes source code for the linux kernel. Getting these packages is easy: yum can do it for you.
yum -y install perl
yum -y install gcc
yum -y install kernel-devel
Once these three packages are installed, you're ready to perform the VMTools install.
Start the VMTools Install (from the vSphere Client)
In your vSphere Client, find your Fedora18 VM and right click on it. Select the Guest menu, then choose Install / Update VMware Tools. Now go to your VM's console, and you should see this:
Click Open with Files to view the contents of the VMware Tools ISO (this ISO is mounted when you start the VMTools install / upgrade from the vSphere client).
Copy the VMTools package to your fedora VM
When Files opens the VMware Tools image, you'll see the screen shown on the right. This is a view of the contents of the VMTools ISO that vSphere has mounted to your virtual machine.
If you double-click the VMwareTools file, the Archive Manager will automatically launch and display the contents of the file. It's a single folder named vmware-tools-distrib. Notice that the title bar for this window says [read only]; that's because the file is still on the VMTools ISO.
Extract the VMTools package to /tmp
Now we need to extract the contents of this file to your VM. Do so by right-clicking the vmware-tools-distrib folder and selecting Extract... You'll see a list of possible locations for the extracted files. I recommend extracting the files to /tmp, as seen in the image to the right. To find /tmp, first select File System in the Places pane, then scroll down until you find tmp in the pane to the right. Leave the Actions options at their default values, and click Extract.
When the Extract completes, you'll see a success message. There's no need to view the extracted files; the rest of the steps are done via the Terminal. Close the Archive Manager and Files, and launch a Terminal window (if you don't already have one running).
Run the install script
- In your Terminal session, su to root. (Type su - and enter the root password for your VM).
- Move to the /tmp directory (cd /tmp).
- Get a listing of the directories and files in /tmp (ls). You'll see vmware-tools-distrib listed here.
- Move to the vmware-tools-distrib directory (cd ./vmware-tools-distrib).
- Now start the installer (./vmware-install.pl).
The installer may take 15 seconds to get set up. Once it starts, you can accept the defaults for the options. Once you've supplied all of the information (again, the defaults are fine here), the vmware-install.pl script will offer to launch the vmware-config-tools.pl script to complete the install. Hit Enter to continue.
Run the configure script
It's safe to accept the defaults for the configure script, with one significant exception. When the script asks about the path to the kernel headers, you need to pay attention. You may see this:
The problem is that the script thinks it has located valid kernel headers in a path named "". But this is a bad path. If you hit Enter here, the script will continue for a moment, then fail. So we need to change the path. Leave this script at the headers prompt, and open a new Terminal tab to perform the following steps.
First, you'll want to find the specific file that the config script is looking for: version.h. It's on your system, just not where the config script is looking. Here's how to find it.
- Change to the /usr/src/kernels directory (cd /usr/src/kernels).
- Change to the directory that matches your running kernel, probably the latest version. In this case, since I'm running 3.8.3.-203, I would do cd 3.8.3-203.fc18.x86_64.
- Change to the following directory: cd /include/generated/uapi/linux.
The version.h file is located here. In my case, the full path is /usr/src/kernels/3.8.3-203.fc18.x86_64/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h. This is the file that the config script is looking for. We just need to copy it to a location where the script can find it. That location (again, in my example) is:
/lib/modules/3.8.3-203.fc18.x86_64/build/include
To copy the file, enter the following command:
cp /usr/src/kernels/3.8.3-203.fc18.x86_64/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /lib/modules/3.8.3-203.fc18.x86_64/build/include
Now, you're good to go. Go back to the first Terminal tab. Change the location for the headers file to /lib/modules/3.8.3-203.fc18.x86_64/build/include, and you'll be good to go.
Accept the rest of the defaults, and the script will complete successfully. When it's done, you'll see that the VMTools status in your vSphere Client has changed to Running (Current).
Wasn't that easy? :)
