Shared folders no longer showing up in guest OS Ubuntu 16.04

[andreadelprete]

Since my last update of VMWare Fusion, shared folders have stopped working, meaning that I cannot see them in my guest OS.

Some details:

• Build number: Professional Version 11.1.0 (13668589)
• MacBook Pro (2019) with OS 10.14.4
• Are there any conditions where it does work? NO
• Shared folders were working until a few weeks ago, and between now and then I've update Fusion
• I am comfortable with the command line
• Guest operating system: Ubuntu 16.04
• The virtual machine has been imported from VirtualBox (but everything was working fine until a few weeks ago)
• I have installed VMware Tools using 'sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools'
• Despite this, in the bottom part of the "shared folders" panel I see a warning message saying "Shared folders will not be available in the virtual machine until VMware Tools is installed and running.". However, the same message was there even a few weeks ago, when shared folders were working fine.

Things I've already tried to do to solve the problem:

• I have uninstalled and re-installed VMware Tools (with apt-get, after running apt-get update), then rebooted, but nothing has changed
• I have removed and added again the shared folders, but nothing has changed

[wila]

Hi,

To install the full suite of VMware Tools you should be running:

apt-get install open-vm-tools-desktop

I doubt that shared folders work with the barebones "open-vm-tools" package alone.

--

Wil

[andreadelprete]

Hi wila,

thank you for the advice. However, I've tried and it didn't work. I've even rebooted, and removed and added the shared folders again. Nothing has changed.

Any idea what's going on?

[Sir_Percy]

Adding to the post from @wila, VMware tools installation should work and once you have a shared folder, additionally with the default location of /mnt / hgfs you can mount one or more directories or subdirectories in the shared folder.

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hi,

No, not sure.

I just grabbed a ubuntu 16.04 VM here and updated it to the latest patches.

In my case the vmhgfs share continued to work.

You might want to try the top answer from this thread:

mount - Enabling shared folders with open-vm-tools - Ask Ubuntu

Note however that on my VM I don't even have that line in my fstab (well it's there, but commented out).

Can't remember the details of what exactly I did I"m afraid.

"basically it should just work", but unfortunately that's not always the case.

This thread also appears to be relevant:

Shared folders not available on Linux guests after upgrading to VMWare Workstation 15

Yes workstation, but the problem is the same there as for Fusion.

--

Wil

[andreadelprete]

Thanks wila, using the trick suggested in the first link worked. To summarize it here, all I had to do was this:

  sudo mount -t fuse.vmhgfs-fuse .host:/ /mnt/hgfs -o allow_other

To then make mounting globally persistent I added the following line to /etc/fstab: 

  .host:/ /mnt/hgfs fuse.vmhgfs-fuse allow_other 0 0

[sanset]

Thanks Wila, it worked. mount path needs to be specified in /etc/fstab and then run mount all