Is Shared Folders no longer supported?

[rasa]

In Ubuntu 14.04 (trusty), I successfully complied and installed VMwareTools-9.6.1-1378637.tar.gz, using the patches at https://github.com/rasa/vmware-tools-patches/tree/master/patches/vmhgfs.

I am able to mount a Shared Folder, but the folder is not usable. Instead, a "Not a directory" error is displayed. For example:

# ls -l /mnt/hgfs

ls: cannot open directory /mnt/hgfs: Not a directory

This issue has been reported previously at Re: Problem building vmware-tools vmhgfs module from workstation 9.0.3 on fedora 19 kernel 3.13.5-10...

and https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/open-vm-tools/+bug/1272196/ .

Note that https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/open-vm-tools/+bug/1272196/comments/5 states:

"The vmhgfs (VMWare Host<->Guest File System) module is no longer be supported by VMWare and it does not build on recent kernels."

Is this, in fact, true? Is Shared Folders no longer supported?

If the answer is yes, what are the alternatives (other than NFS, Samba, SSHFS, etc)?

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hello @rasa

Unfortunately I can not make an official VMware statement, but I think you are misreading that reply.

The problem is that the VMware Tools distribution is a bit "complex", the reason for that is actually to simplify things and have all the VMware drivers being handled by the respective kernel developers and linux distributions.

There's 3 different "tracks".

1. Linux "inbox" drivers, eg. drivers that are part of the kernel / linux distributions, these include, vmxnet3 network driver, pvscsci driver, memory balloon driver, vmwgfx 3d graphics driver, vmci and vsock drivers, see also: VMware KB: VMware support for Linux inbox VMware drivers

Down on that page you can find the part that answers your question:

Why does an operating system release not include the vmhgfs driver?

The vmhgfs driver has not been contributed upstream. To work around this situation, install VMware Tools bundled with the Workstation or Fusion products, which will install the missing vmhgfs drivers. The VMware Tools installer will not disturb inbox VMware drivers included in the OS.

2. Open-vmware-tools drivers, these are extra libraries extending functionality. This used to contain everything in the past but parts have been moved to the inbox drivers and the part you are looking for -vmhgfs drivers- is part of the desktop product offering. See also: VMware KB: VMware support of open-vm-tools

3. The bundled vmware tools package. This is where you will find the vmhgfs driver, your problem now is that you are trying to use Ubuntu 14.04 and that OS is not even released (next month). I 've got it installed here as well, without any customisation and while I can list the mount point it is not having the shared folder. Drag & drop between guests however does work. I'll have a look at why it doesn't list the share after the OS is updated to most recent (didn't update since last week)

hope this helps,

--

Wil

edit: FWIW I reinstalled vmware tools and it did indeed fail on the vmhgfs driver. While I can probably patch that (the errors appear fairly trivial) I'm not in that much of a need and prefer waiting until Ubuntu has released trusty and VMware has updated vmware tools. For the moment I just use drag & drop as mentioned earlier.

[rasa]

@wila: thank you for that very detailed response. It is much appreciated.

I now see that Steve Goddard, from VMWare, mentions in Re: Fusion 6.02: linux guest --- how to see possible shares? that

"There has been a bug filed to track this issue and it will be addressed shortly"

so we just have to be patient. The functionality will be restored eventually.

[wila]

Hi,

Glad to hear it helped, as more people have asked similar questions I've written it down in this blog post

The evolution of VMware Tools for Linux

When I wrote my answer here I forgot about the OSP packages and they appear to have been updated very very recently.

There's no trusty folder under the ubuntu versions yet, but I would expect them to roll the changes into any version anyways.

So if you feel for another experiment you can try looking at one of these:

http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/5.5latest/ubuntu/dists/index.html

--

Wil

[kaistaats]

I have good news!

(a short story first)

I was running Ubuntu 10.04 on VMWare for the past 3 years relatively error free. Everynowandthen the shared folders would just stop working, even between Ubuntu kernel upgrades. I re-ran vmware-config-tools.pl and it was fixed. But when I upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04 the shared folders just stopped working. When I ran vmware-hgfsclient it could "see" what was suppose to be shared, but no-go for an actual mount point at /mnt/hgfs.

Fortunately, VMWare 6.0.4 was released. When I again ran vmware-config-tools.pl after this upgrade, it all just works and life is good again.

So, it seems that Ubuntu 14.04 must have VMWare 6.0.4

kai

[randomu]

Thanks for the reminder about vmware-config-tools.pl !!!

I did that once before and forgot, so then I was trying to re-install the tools from the ISO which doesn't work...

I am finding that almost every time I upgrade Ubuntu 14.04 I lose the shared folders.  But now I've written down that step.

Randy