The VMware Tools are software installed on a guest VM for improving performance when running on a VMWare host.

This page explains how to install the VMware Tools on an Ubuntu guest/ Turnkey appliance VM. for other installation methods please follow the appropriate guest OS instructions.

You will have to enter some Linux commands. use ssh client or the built in AJAX shell(in http://yourserver:12320).copy&paste the text in the gray section in your shell.

NOTE: For higher performance in any virtualization environment install the linux-virtual and linux-virtual-headers packages.

There are two ways to have guest support in VMWare linux guest:

1. Installing open-vm-tools package.

2. VMWare tools CD (That appears on the VMWare console menus)

Both methods require active internet conenction during installation.

Common steps:

Since revolutions server appliance tends to be minimal as possible it does not include software repositories wich are not required for normal operation. the VMWare tools require a working compiler in order to install it's drivers.

So the first step is to allow certain software repositoris which are not enabled by default. enter the following commands at the command prompt:

sed -i 's/Revpatch//' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sources.list
sed -i -e 's/^ *#* *//' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sources.list
apt-get update

First option: Installing VMware tools from your host:

1. Mount the CD image of the VMware tools provided by your host. this is usually done by clicking "Install VMware tools" in the user interface.

2.Stop the Revengine. This will disconnect all agents currently connected.

/etc/init.d/revengine stop

3. Install build tools

apt-get install build-essential

4. Install the tools distribution.

mkdir /mnt/cdrom

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

cd /tmp/

tar zxvpf /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools*tar.gz
cd vmware-tools-distrib/
./vmware-install.pl

5. Follow the on screen instructions and answer yes to all questions.

6. Reboot the machine( simply by typing reboot in the prompt)

Second option: Installing open-vm-tools

After you finished the common steps above,

apt-get -y --force-yes install gnupg ca-certificates
wget http://packages.vmware.com/tools/VMWARE-PACKAGING-GPG-KEY.pub -q -O- | apt-key add -
echo "deb http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/4.1latest/ubuntu hardy main restricted" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sources.list
apt-get update

apt-get install vmware-open-vm-tools-kmod-source
module-assistant prepare

module-assistant build vmware-open-vm-tools-kmod-source
module-assistant install vmware-open-vm-tools-kmod

apt-get install vmware-open-vm-tools-nox

And reboot the VM to complete the installation.