VMware guest tools are important for its guest machines. How does one update the guest tools after upgrading the host software?
Every time there’s a new update to VMware host software, an update to its guest tool is also included. When you have guests already installed on this host machine, you must update / upgrade the tools in order to access new features and enhancements.
This lesson 22 tutorial shows students and new users how to do that in Windows and Ubuntu guest machines.
In our last tutorial on this, we said that it was important to install VMware guest tools on all guest machine. Doing this improves the guest machine, adds new functionality, enhances graphic performance and enables drag n’ drop feature.
As you can see, the guest tool is very important to install. When there are updates for the tools, you should probably upgrade as well.
Step 1: Updating / Upgrading VMware Guest Tool on Windows
In many situations, things are much easier to do in Windows systems than Linux or other operation systems.
Updating VMware guest tool is no exception. Doing it in Windows guest machines is as simple as clicking a button and accepting the defaults.
To do that, open VMware host software and open the Windows guest machine. After logging in to Windows guest machine, select VM –> Tool –> Update VMware Tools….
When you do that, VMware virtual CD should open up on your desktop. If it does not, press the Windows logo key + R on your keyboard top open the Run command.
Then typeD:setup.exe
When the installer opens, accept and click Next and accept the default settings until the wizard is done.
That’s it! After installing, restart your guest machine and you’re done.
Step 2: Installing VMware Guest Tools on Ubuntu
Installing the guest tool on Ubuntu is a bit trickier. You can’t just launch the wizard like you do in Windows systems.
When you click the Update VMware Guest Tools button from the host machine, a virtual CD will be mounted on Ubuntu machines.
You can’t use a GUI wizard to install like you do in Windows systems. To install, run the commands below to copy the content of the virtual CD to a temporary location
tar -xvf /media/$USER/"VMware Tools"/VMwareTools*.gz -C /tmp
Then, run the commands below to install the packages.
sudo /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl -d
That’s it!
Method #2:
You can easily install the Open VM Tools (OVT) that can be installed from Ubuntu default repositories. OVT is the opensource implementation of VMware Tools consisting of utilities to enhance the guest machine.
To install the OVT packages, run the commands below.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools-desktop
That’s it! Restart your machine and you’re done.
Enjoy!
Related posts:
- Lesson 15: Installing VMware Workstation Pro on Windows
- Lesson 16: Installing VMware Guest Tools on Ubuntu
- Lesson 25: Create VMware Workstation Guest Machines
- How do You Install VMware Workstation Pro on Windows
- Student question – How to Resolve Ubuntu 16.10 Piix4_SMBus Host SMBus controller bus not enabled on VMWare Workstation Pro?