@jcverdie wrote:That would make sense... But then I run into the other problem I've posted: https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Fusion-Discussions/shared-folders-are-not-visible-after-reb... which seems to be related to the same "mess"...
The inability to see the shared folders in the guest is an open-vm-tools issue and not related to the GUI not recognizing that tools are installed.
@wila beat me to the keyboard on this with the solution. Add the line to /etc/fstab as he indicated and the shared folders will be automatically visible after booting the VM. It's a one-time fix.