VMware Fusion: how do I get my shared folder to appear in CentOS

[RobertLauriston]

• Intel Mac running macOS Big Sur 11.6.8
• VMware Fusion 12.2.4
• CentOS 3.10.0-1160.el7.x86_64

Install VMware Tools is disabled.

I ran sudo yum install open-vm-tools-desktop but that doesn't seem to have made any difference.

Settings show a shared folder is available, but will not be available until VMware Tools is running.

I've been using VMware for years and this is always a challenge. Docs are not helpful.

[Technogeezer]

Does your VM has open-vm-tools installed? If so, the error message in the Fusion GUI is bogus. The Fusion GUI does not reflect the status of the installation of open-vm-tools since the installation of those tools is managed by the VM's package management utilities, not VMware.

If open-vm-tools are installed, then you're encountering a known issue that results in the shared folders not mounting at boot time. See the following VMware KB article for more information: How to configure VMware Tools Shared Folders Linux mounts

The standard documented workaround is to disable and enable the Shared Folders feature of the VM from the Fusion GUI while the VM is running. However, this work-around is not persistent, and must be repeated after each reboot of the VM.

A persistent solution is to edit /etc/fstab and add an entry to mount the shared folders automatically on boot. As an example:

• make sure directory /mnt/hgfs exists
• add the following line to /etc/fstab

• vmhgfs-fuse /mnt/hgfs  fuse defaults,allow_other   0   0

• reboot

The shared folders will now be automatically mounted to /mnt/hgfs at boot time.