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→Installing VMware Tools on Windows
The VMware Tools Control panel, which will be covered in more detail later in this chapter, provides a user friendly central location within the guest operating system for changing settings relating to VMware Tools and performing tasks such as shrinking the size of virtual disks attached to the guest's virtual machine.
== Installing VMware Tools on a Windows Guest ==
Amongst the files installed during the VMware Server installation process is a collection of CD-ROM ISO image files, one for each supported guest operating system type. When the VMware Tools installation process is initiated, VMware Server mounts the appropriate ISO image in place of the selected virtual machine's CD/DVD drive from which, depending the guest operating system, the installation will either autorun, or may be manually invoked. In order for this mechanism to work, the virtual machine must have at least one CD/DVD device configured. If a DVD or CD is currently in the physical drive of the host, eject it before proceeding with the VMware Tools installation.
Upon completion of the VMware Tools installation process, click on the ''Finish'' button. As the installation included the addition of new drivers to the Windows opearting system it may be necessary to reboot the virtual machine before the installation will take effect. In the majority of cases, Windows will display a dialog to this effect if a reboot is necessary. A subsequent review of the virtual machine status in VI Web Access should indicate that VMware Tools are now installed and operational. == Installing VMware Tools on a Linux Guest == VMware Tools installation on Linux uses a similar mechanism to that that described in the Windows section above. Once again, an ISO CD image containing the Linux VMware Tools installation files is mounted as the CD/DVD device of the virtual machine running target guest operating system. The installation can be performed either using a graphical RPM package management tool or from the command line, both of which will be covered in the section. In both cases, the installation is initiated by logging into the VI Web Access management interface, selecting the target virtual machine from the ''Inventory'' panel and clicking on ''Install VMware Tools'' in the ''Status'' panel of the ''Summary'' workspace. On most recent Linux distributions, the CD image will auto-mount as soon it is attached to the virtual machines CD/DVD device. If the image does not automount it will need to be mounted as superuser using a command similar to the following: <pre>mount /dev/<device> <mountpoint></pre> where ''<device>'' is the device by which the CD/DVD drive is accessed (for example (/dev/hdb1) and ''<mountpoint>'' is a suitable directory where the image may be mounted (for example /tmp/vmware). On most Linux desktops (such as GNOME and KDE) an icon will appear on the desktop when the CD image has been mounted. In addition some Linux desktops will also display a window containing the contents of the CD image. The following figure, for example, illustrates the GNOME Nautilus file manager displaying the contents of the VMware Tools installation image: [[Image:vmware_tools_nautilus.jpg|The VMware Tools folder displayed in Nautilus on the Linux GNOME Desktop]] VMware Tools can be installed either using the Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) archive or via the compressed tar archive (tar.gz) file. To install using RPM doublke click on the .rpm file in the file manager and use the graphical RPM installation tool as shown in the following figure: [[Image:vmware_tools_rpm_installer.jpg|Installing VMware Tools on linux using the RPM installer]] As an alternative to using the graphical RPM installer, change directory to the CD image and run the following command in a terminal window as superuser: <pre>rpm -Uhv <path to cd image>/<filename>.rpm</pre> where ''filename'' is the name of the RPM archive (the naming of which differs between versions) and ''<path to cd image>'' is the path to where the CD image was either manually or automatically mounted. To identify this location, run the ''mount'' command in a terminal window. For example, the following output from ''mount'' indicates that VMware Tools is mounted at ''/media/VMware Tools'': <pre>]$ mount/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 on / type ext3 (rw)proc on /proc type proc (rw)sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)/dev/sr0 on /media/VMware Tools type iso9660 (ro,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,uid=500)</pre> To install VMware tools from the compressed tar archive, begin by unpacking the archive into a suitable location. For example: <pre>tar xvfz <path to cd image>/<filename>.tar.gz</pre> Once VMware Tools have been installed using either method, the next step is to configure the software.
