vmware tools not working on Windows 10 host Ubuntu 22.04 Guest

[bluemoon6]

Hello!  I have a brand new install of VMWare Workstation 16 Player with a Windows 10 host and Ubuntu 22.04 guest.  I have used a similar setup with a different machine and older version of ubuntu in the past.  I cannot copy and paste, drag and drop files, or share a folder.  The internet is working fine on both operating systems, and it looks like open-vm-tools was installed during the setup of the virtual machine.  However it does not appear to be working. 

- I tried uninstalling and reinstalling it on the command line in ubuntu per the below website.   No luck.

https://linux-packages.com/ubuntu-focal-fossa/package/open-vm-tools

- The option to do anything with VMWare Tools from the Player menu itself under manage is greyed out.  

- Under the virtual machine settings, under options, there is no item for guest isolation.  

- I tried an entire new virtual machine and have the same problem.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions you may have! 

[lamarty7]

have you tried to install Open VMtools instead ?

[bluemoon6]

My apologies if I was mixing up the terminology, but I believe the open-vm-tools linked to above that I installed is the same thing you are referring to as Open VMtools.   

When I run vmtools-service status it says command not found, which seems like a bad sign :P. 

But when I run /etc/init.d/open-vm-tools status it says it is active and running, so not sure what is going on.

[Technogeezer]

You need to install both open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools-desktop to get drag/drop to work:

sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop

then reboot the VM.

The option to do anything with VMWare Tools from the Player menu itself under manage is greyed out. 

The GUI in Workstation Player does not reflect whether open-vm-tools is installed - only if the legacy VMware Tools are installed for older Linux version that don't support open-vm-tools. The installation and status of the tools are managed by the guest's package manager from the distribution's repository (most Linux distros have picked up open-vm-tools).

The proper way to check for installation of open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools-desktop is to use apt commands in the guest OS, and you've already found a command to check if the open-vm-tools service is running.

... or share folders

There is a quirk with VMware shared folders on Linux when using open-vm-tools where the shared folders that you've configured in the GUI do not appear at VM. 

Workaround:

If the VM is powered on, disable and enable the Shared Folders feature from the GUI. For resolving the issue permanently, edit /etc/fstab and add an entry to mount the Shared Folders automatically on boot.

For example, add the line:

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

[bluemoon6]

Thanks for the info!  I can how use a shared folder which is a great relief :).   

However, I have tried installing/restarting/checking open-vm-tools-desktop several times and I still cannot copy and paste or drag and drop.  I am not sure how to check if it is running.  I tried the following and it doesn't have the same behavior as for just open-vm-tools.

/etc/init.d/open-vm-tools-desktop status

It says no such file or directory.  So not sure how to check if it is working properly, but it is installed. 

[Technogeezer]

When you log in, drop to a shell and issue 'ps -ef | grep -i vm'. You should see 2 vmtoolsd processes running, one of which is running as root, has a parent PID of 1i, and has no arguments. The other one is running under your username, and has additional arguments '-n vmusr --blockFd 3' (or something like that).

I assume you rebooted the VM after installing open-vm-tools-desktop and not simply restarted the open-vm-tools service.

[bluemoon6]

Aha, thanks for the info.  Checking with the line you provided above did show the vmtoolsd lines you described.  I did some more testing of a few things, and I can copy and paste smaller files (but not drag and drop, which is ok, copy and paste is good enough). 

It turns out part of the issue is that I was testing with larger file (1.8 GB) that I was initially trying to copy.  I have not had problems copying those types of large files in the past, but hard to say where the issue is.  If I try to copy and paste into a folder on Ubuntu guest the folder crashes.  If I try to copy and paste on the desktop it sometimes does nothing, other times it shows the black screen with the file name and the copy progress bar at the bottom but the file doesn't actually copy.  But now that the shared folders work I can use that to transfer larger files.  

Thanks again everyone, this was incredibly helpful!