vmware-tools installation under bt2.0 VM

[imported_mobychien]

Can anyone show us how to install vmware-tools under bt2.0 VM?

[cyberchor]

Hi!

I'm running BT2 Final in a VM box under xp & is working touch wood.

All you need is VMwareTools-5.5.3-34685 or later (you need to upgrade VMware, if you are running a older version), and a small tweak.

Here's how it could be done:

1. From VMWare's VM menu, choose 'Install VMware tools'. The ISO containing vmware tools for linux would be loaded in to the VM's CD drive.


2. mount the drive, if required
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

3. untar VMwareTools-5.5.3-34685.tar.gz to some directory on hard drive

5. Create soft links of rc.d folders for various runlevels as expected by the vmware installation script.

for x in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
do
ln -s /etc/rc.d/ /etc/rc$x.d
done

6. change to untarred folder of vmware tools and execute install.sh and answer the questions (the defaults worked perfectly for me)

7. for host/guest filesystem daemon (sharefiles), the tools dont get loaded automatically. So I run /etc/rc.d/S19vmware-tools start to run this script

Hope this helps. All the best

[imported_mobychien]

Thanks for the instruction.
I was able to successfully install vmware-tools under workstation 6.0 except u need to create a /etc/pam.d directory beforehand.

[nathalie]

Here's how I got the startup/shutdown scripts to run. (this may not be the best way, but this worked for me)

First of all, I couldn't get the CD with the virtual tools to mount at all, but I had the tools in the /tmp directory of another vmware linux machine, so I started it up, and from Backtrack I FTP'd to the other vmware machine and downloaded the tools and put them in /tmp and untar/unzipped per the documentation.


Using mobychien's and cyberchor's advice, I did the following:

mkdir /etc/pam.d

ln -s /etc/rc.d/ /etc/rc0.d
ln -s /etc/rc.d/ /etc/rc1.d
ln -s /etc/rc.d/ /etc/rc2.d
ln -s /etc/rc.d/ /etc/rc3.d
ln -s /etc/rc.d/ /etc/rc4.d
ln -s /etc/rc.d/ /etc/rc5.d
ln -s /etc/rc.d/ /etc/rc6.d


Then, to get the vmware tools to automatically start and stop, I did:

mkdir /etc/inid.d/rc3.d
cd /etc/inid.d/rc3.d

ln -s /etc/init.d/vmware-tools S19vmware-tools
ln -s /etc/init.d/vmware-tools K08vmware-tools


and it works

I'm using Workstation 6, and it's sooo nice to be able to drag and drop between Backtrack and my host OS.


Good luck!
Nat

[imported_mobychien]

If you install the vmware-tools under VMware workstation 6, both the start/stop scripts are automatically installed at the end.
However, I don't seem to be able to get the drag & drop function to work between BT and the Window host though.

[nathalie]

If you install the vmware-tools under VMware workstation 6, both the start/stop scripts are automatically installed at the end.
However, I don't seem to be able to get the drag & drop function to work between BT and the Window host though.

In my case, the vmware tools installation complained that it didn't see the rc0-rc6 directories, so I created those temporarily to trick it into installing. But since backtrack doesn't use these directories, I had to create those symbolic links.

I couldn't get the tools to mount, I pulled the .tar.gz tools package from another linux vmware machine that had the tools installed and still had the install file on it in /tmp

The drag&drop works great, are you sure your tools are running? Try "ps -ef | grep vmware" to double check.

[leejhamilton]

I must be missing something really stupid, but here goes:
Tried installing tools onto backtrack v2 final in vmware workstation 6, however cant find install.sh, only installer.sh and it doest work.
So i ran vmware-install.pl after creating all the symbolic links, however now it asks for the location of the directory containing the init directories (rc0.d/ to rc6.d/) and no matter what i enter it just doesn't accept the answer and wont go any further

[nathalie]

So i ran vmware-install.pl after creating all the symbolic links, however now it asks for the location of the directory containing the init directories (rc0.d/ to rc6.d/) and no matter what i enter it just doesn't accept the answer and wont go any further

What worked for me is entering as the directory:
/etc/init.d


But do this first:


mkdir /etc/pam.d
cd /etc/init.d
mkdir rc{0,1,2,3,4,5,6}.d



Also, there may be other ways to get the tools installed, but I fiddled around for a while and this is what worked for me, and it's been working fine since.

[leejhamilton]

Brilliant that worked great

[fundutzi]

For those of you having difficulty finding the files to install.

Good old petri.co.il had some advice.

When you Do the Install VMware tools from the VMware toolbar. It creates a linux.ios file in the host Program files (if you use m$).

I extracted the "VMWARETO.TGZ" from this iso. Ftp it to the VMware BT2F.

tar -xzvf VMWARETO.TGZ

very important follow the advice from nathalie earlier in this post. Create those folders before continuing.

then from this newly extracted directory run the "vmware-install.pl".

Agree to all the defaults.

That is it.

Thank you for all your help above.