Best Practices- Installing CentOS VM on VMware Workstation - Part 2

Best Practices- Installing CentOS VM on

VMware Workstation

- Part 2

INSTALLING VMware TOOLS

in PART 1, we saw how to effectively install CentOS 5.8 on VMware Workstation...

in this PART, we will install VMware Tools in the VM..

NOTE: If you had selected Easy Install during the install process from Workstation, then this step can be avoided as Easy Install installs VMware-Tools automatically.. still if you ever want, you can install VMware-Tools anytime you want...

Benefits of VMware Tools

The followings are benefits of VMware Tools on your Guest OS:

1. A set of VMware device drivers:

These drivers include:

• Graphics Performance: VMware Tools installs a SVGA driver that increases vide0 refresh.


• Efficient Memory Allocation: A memory control driver that is installed with  VMware Tools provides increased efficiency in memory allocation.


• Accelerated Mouse Driver: For increased mouse responsiveness.


• Optimized SCSI Driver: A Bus Logic SCSI driver provides faster I/O performance for some guest OS.

VMware Tools control panel:

The Tools control panel lets you modify settings.

• Run Scripts: Scripts can be defined to run after particular events such as the VM starting up or shutting down.


• Shrink the Virtual Disk: By reducing the amount of disk space a VM’s virtual disk takes up by removing empty unused space will lead to more usable storage on your hosts volume.

Connect External Devices:

• You can connect external media devices such as a floppy (who uses those anymore)  or CD/DVD drive. These appear as a virtual device when presented within the guest

To summarize,Installing VMware Tools eliminates or improves the following issues:

• Low video resolution


• Inadequate color depth


• Incorrect display of network speed


• Restricted movement of the mouse


• Inability to copy and paste and drag-and-drop files


• Missing sound

Installing VMware Tools within X

Select VM > Install VMware Tools in your Workstation menu as shown:



When you choose VM > Install VMware Tools from the VMware Workstation menu, VMware Workstation temporarily connects the virtual machine's first virtual CD-ROM drive to the ISO image file that contains the VMware Tools installer for your guest operating system and you are ready to begin the installation process.

Double-click the VMware Tools CD icon on the desktop.

Note: In some Linux distributions, the VMware Tools CD icon may fail to appear when you install VMware Tools within an X windows session on a guest.

Extract the VMwareTools.tar to the Desktop as shown below:



In an X terminal, logged in as root (su -), configure VMware Tools by navigating to the path where we extracted the VMwareTools.tar contents.. in this case, its /root/Desktop/vmware-tools-distrib/

Once there, simply execute the vmware-install.pl file as shown below:

Respond to the questions the installer displays on the screen. Press Enter to accept the default value.

Note: Be sure to respond yes when the installer offers to run the configuration program.

Note: Some guest operating systems require a reboot for full functionality.

Installing VMware Tools from the Command Line with the Tar Installer

The first steps are performed on the host, within Workstation menus:

1. Power on the virtual machine.

2. After the guest operating system has started, prepare your virtual machine to install VMware Tools.

• Choose VM > Install VMware Tools.

The remaining steps take place inside the virtual machine.

3. As root (su -), mount the VMware Tools virtual CD-ROM image, change to a working directory (for example, /tmp), uncompress the installer, then unmount the CD-ROM image.

Note: Some Linux distributions automatically mount CD-ROMs. If your distribution uses automounting, do not use the mount and umount commands below. You still must untar the VMware Tools installer to /tmp.

Some Linux distributions use different device names or organize the /dev directory differently. If your CD-ROM drive is not /dev/cdrom or if the mount point for a CD-ROM is not /mnt/cdrom, you must modify the following commands to reflect the conventions used by your distribution.

• mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom


• cd /tmp

Note: If you have a previous installation, delete the previous vmware-distrib directory before installing. The default location of this directory is
/tmp/vmware-tools-distrib.

4. Untar the VMware Tools tar file:

• tar zxf /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-5.0.0-<xxxx>.tar.gz


• umount /dev/cdrom

Where <xxxx> is the build/revision number of the VMware Workstation release.

Note: If you attempt to install a tar installation over an rpm installation — or the reverse — the installer detects the previous installation and must convert the installer database format before continuing.

5. Run the .tar VMware Tools installer:

• cd vmware-tools-distrib


• ./vmware-install.pl

Respond to the configuration questions on the screen. Press Enter to accept the default value.

6. Log off of the root account.

• exit

7. Start X and your graphical environment

8. In an X terminal, launch the VMware Tools background application.

• vmware-toolbox &

Note: You may run VMware Tools as root or as a normal user. To shrink virtual disks, you must run VMware Tools as root (su -).

Uninstalling VMware Tools

To remove VMware Tools from your Linux guest operating system, log on as root (su -) and enter the following command:

From a tar install

• vmware-uninstall-tools.pl

From an RPM install

• rpm -e VMwareTools

In PART 3 of this series, I'll show you how to ADD A EXTERNAL HDD TO CentOS AND THEN MOUNT IT !!