Context:
I'm relatively new to virtual machines, and need to use a pre-existing guest machine for a university project. I received the guest machine via flash-drive. OS' are Host - Ubuntu 16.04.5, Guest - Ubuntu 12.04.3. I am using VMWare Workstation Player 15, which I downloaded from the site. I have no other vmware products installed that I'm aware of.
I am trying to get vmware-tools working on the ubuntu guest. I am currently unable create a shared folder (there is no error message, but no shared folder is appearing). I am also unable to copy files from the guest to the host machine, although I can copy text onto the clip-board, and I can copy files from the host onto the guest. From looking online, I believe the issue is vmware-tools not being installed properly. When trying to update vmware-tools through the machine, I get an error message (below).
I also have two Windows installations of VMWare Workstation Player (one is 12, the other isn't on hand, but I think it's 14). Both of these run copies of the same virtual machine. I have no problems copy-pasting on either of them.
Error Message:
Error happens when using:
Toolbar -> Virtual Machine -> Update VMWare Tools.
First message is:
"Click Install to connect the VMware Tools installer CD to the virtual machine. Mount the virtual CD drive in the guest, uncompress the installer, and then execute vmware-install.pl to install VMware Tools."
Click 'install'. Then, error message reads:
"Unable to install VMware Tools. An error occurred while trying to access image file "/usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/linux.iso" needed to install VMware Tools: No such file or directory. If your product shipped with the VMware Tools package, reinstall VMware Player, then try again to install the VMware Tools package in the virtual machine.
The VMware Tools image is inaccessible."
Other pages I've seen and things I've tried:
I've seen the following two pages here and here. They talk about "ESXI" and "vsphere". I haven't used either of these things, and I don't really know what they are, but it seems like a different situation.
Looking to the "/usr/lib/vmware/isoimages" directory on my host, I have the following files, with no 'linux.iso' file. On the guest machine, the directory "/usr/lib/vmware" doesn't exist (although I don't think that's an issue).
I tried searching for general help installing vmware tools, but I didn't find any fixes. I tried following this guide, for manually installing vmware tools. When attempting to 'mount' I get the following error:
Search results from that suggested my "drive wasn't connected to the VM". Looking to my VM settings, have this in my CD-ROM settings:
The ISO image section originally had "/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/isoimages/linux.iso" set, however "/Applications" doesn't exist. I suspect it is there from a Windows host that this machine once ran on (again, I received a copy of this machine from a colleague some time ago). I set the directory to "/usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/VirtualPrinter-Linux.iso", which didn't fix the error.
Conclusion:
Ultimately, I have no idea what I'm doing, and I've been trying to fix this for most of the day. If anyone has any advice, or knows how to deal with this, I'd be very grateful.
Thanks,
Joshua,
