hgfs not working on Fusion and latest Ubuntu 14.04

[ggeldenhuis]

I have been trying to build an Ubuntu box using packer( hashicorp) and also manually that I can use in vagrant. Vagrant as a tool makes use of hgfs to mount file systems on the host machine within the vm.

The latest Ubuntu server 14.04.4 comes with 4.2.0-27 kernel which can be dist-upgraded to 4.2.-35.

open-vm-tools (9.4.0-1280544-5ubuntu6) does not give me hgfs functionality so I have to resort to the VMWare Tools which tells me to use open-vm-tools. The installation of the VMWare Tools ( 10.0.5-3228253 ) takes me through a list of questions, incidentally completely ignoring the --force-install flag and still prompting me. The end result of the installation of the tools is that I still don't have a functioning vmhgfs kernel driver when I reboot the box so I can't use shared folder functionality in vagrant. The only way past this at the moment is to use an older kernel and release from Ubuntu. I can get it working fine using Ubuntu 14.04.3 which comes with 3.19.0-25.

I am using VMware Fusion 8.1.0 (3272237)

So my question is, how can I get vmware tools to install a working version of the vmhgfs kernel module on the latest version of Ubuntu 14.04.4?

Regards

[ChipMcK]

perhaps  https://communities.vmware.com/thread/524951

[xahare]

have you tried this with ubuntu 16.04?

[ggeldenhuis]

I have not yet tried ubuntu 16.04. Its still very fresh of the press but will give it a go.

[amzhang]

Hi ggeldenhuisggeldenhuis,

Please try to remove open-vm-tools from ubuntu guest os and install bundled VMware tools manually.

Because hgfs is not included in open-vm-tools before open-vm-tools version 10.

Please try in ubuntu terminal, enter:  sudo apt-get purge open-vmn-tools open-vm-tools-desktop

Then open-vm-tools can be removed.

Regards,

Amanda

[tjrob]

None of this works for me on either Ubuntu 14.04 or 16.04.

I have done "sudo apt-get purge open-vmn-tools open-vm-tools-desktop", and after unpacking the VMware tools tarball from the CDROM, "sudo ./vmware-install.pl".

On both Ubuntu versions, during vmware-install.pl it gets compile errors in vmhgfs.

How can this be fixed?

[tjrob]

There was a typo: open-vmn-tools => open-vm-tools. It was correct when I typed it in Ubuntu, incorrect only in this forum.

[Darcyz]

Hi tjrob,

Welcome to the VMware communities.

hgfs is controlled by VMware tools, These type of issues are almost always due to a broken VMware Tools install.

For the ubuntu, follow these steps:

Uninstall open-vm-tools

Reboot guest OS

In the terminal type: vmware-toolbox-cmd -v to check the open-vm-tools is really uninstall successfully.(if uninstall, it cannot find the command)

Install VMware Tools

Reboot guest OS.

In the terminal type: vmware-toolbox-cmd -v to check the vmware-tools is install successfully.

Note: if your still doesn't work, please let me know, I will provide more details.

Cheers