Installing VMware Tools (Guest Tools)
Table of Contents
Installing “Guest Tools”, gives a better user experience with VMware VMs. This is why since Kali Linux 2019.3, during the setup process it should detect if Kali Linux is inside a VM. If it is, then automatically install any additional tools (in VMware case, open-vm-tools
and open-vm-tools-desktop
). The Guest Tools are also pre-installed in the Live image since Kali Linux 2021.3.
As of September 2015, VMware recommends using the distribution-specific open-vm-tools (OVT) instead of the VMware Tools package for guest machines.
Open-VM-Tools
Should you decide to create your own VMware installation of Kali Linux (rather than using our pre-made VMware images), and you want to force a manual reinstall of open-vm-tools
(as something has gone wrong), first make sure you are fully updated, then enter the following:
kali@kali:~$ sudo apt update
[...]
kali@kali:~$
kali@kali:~$ sudo apt install -y --reinstall open-vm-tools-desktop fuse
[...]
kali@kali:~$
kali@kali:~$ sudo reboot -f
kali@kali:~$
Adding Support for Shared Folders When Using OVT
Unfortunately, shared folders will not work out of the box, some additional scripts are needed. Those can be installed easily with kali-tweaks
:
kali@kali:~$ kali-tweaks
In the Kali Tweaks menu, select Virtualization, then Install additional packages and scripts for VMware. Congratulations, you now have two additional tools in your toolbox!
The first one is a little script to mount the VMware Shared Folders. Invoke it with:
kali@kali:~$ sudo mount-shared-folders
And with a bit of luck, checking /mnt/hgfs/
you should see your shared folders.
The second script is a helper to restart the VM tools. Indeed, it’s not uncommon for OVT to stops functioning correctly (e.g. such as copy/paste between the host OS and guest VM stops working). In this case, running this script can help to fix the issues:
kali@kali:~$ sudo restart-vm-tools
For older versions of Kali Linux, here is our previous guide.
Updated on: 2023-Oct-29
Author:
g0tmi1k