HowTo: Install VMware Tools on CentOS/RHEL

Don’t Forget VMware Tools!

VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtual machine’s guest operating system and improves management of the virtual machine.

Without VMware Tools installed in your guest operating system, guest performance lacks important functionality.

Installing VMware Tools

Open Vmware Worstation or ESX console and Locate the VM you need to install VMware Tools to.

Right click the VM and choose “Tools”, then select “Install VMware Tools”.

It will connect the virtual CD-ROM device to the appropriate CD image containing the tools for your virtual machine.

Log into VMware Guest you need to install VMware Tools to.

Install the kernel-devel, gcc, dracut, make, perl and eject packages using yum:

$ yum -y install kernel-devel gcc dracut make perl eject

Mount CD image with VMware Tools:

$ mount /dev/cdrom /media

Uncompress the archive with VMware Tools:

$ tar -zxf /media/VMwareTools-*.tar.gz -C /tmp

Run the installer (exclude the --default option if you prefer to control the installation process):

$ /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl --default

Remove the temporary files after installation:

$ rm -rf /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib

Validating VMware Tools Installation

Use the command as follows to validate that VMware Tools is running:

$ initctl list | grep vmware-tools
vmware-tools start/running

To determine the vmware-tools version, run the command:

$ vmware-toolbox-cmd -v
Was it useful? Share this post with the world!

3 Replies to “HowTo: Install VMware Tools on CentOS/RHEL”

  1. Thank you for this procedure!

  2. Odd…I’m running Centos 7.7 and I don’t have initctl in path.

    1. use systemctl -l | grep vmware-tools

Leave a Reply