Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Install VMware Tools on RHEL 6 & Centos 6

This is a HOWTO for installing VMware Tools on RHEL 6 and Centos 6.  I'm mainly posting this since I never remember what the prerequisites are.

Install the VMware tools prerequisites:
yum install make gcc kernel-devel kernel-headers glibc-headers perl

Mount the VMware Tools CD (after inserting it into the VM)
mkdir /mnt/cdrom
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

Copy the install bundle from the CD and extract it.
cp /mnt/cdrom/VMware-Tools*.tar.gz /tmp/
cd /tmp/
tar xvfz VMwareTools*.tar.gz

Run the installer, default on all prompts works fine.
cd /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib
./vmware-install.pl  # add -d to auto accept defaults


6 comments:

caldwellfamily said...

You must also load perl to run the .pl script

yum install perl

kiwi_nz said...

Seems to go ok, untill the last bit of the setup and it asks 'What is the location of the directory of C header files that match your running kernel? The path "" is not valid. Would you like to change it? [yes].
We have the CactiEZ install 0.7 OS is CentOS 6 x64.
Hmm, now where is the C header file directory???
thanks

Andy said...

kiwi_nz, make sure the kernel-headers and glibc-headers packages are installed.

kiwi_nz said...

ok, a question from a non linux admin, can I do this using yum and it will install this?
yum update ...

kiwi_nz said...

ok carryed on without making the C path selection and I appear to have tools installed. Well enough to get the VM to migrate, and the IP address etc. are visible in the vSphere console.
Many thanks for the instructions

Service to Society said...

I want to install VMware onto RHEL 6.5. Where do I get the VMware tools package from? Please provide the link. The system where I want to install this does not has connectivity to outside network, so I need a setup which I will be transferring onto that system.