How to install VMware Tools in Raspberry Pi OS (Debian)

There are several reasons to install VMware Tools in Raspberry Pi OS, Linux Debian, or any other OS. Although this is an easy operation in Windows, in Linux-like systems, the process can be more complicated, especially if you are not familiar with the Linux CLI (Terminal). This blog post is an easy and quick approach to how to install VMware Tools in Raspberry Pi OS.

Note: This how-to guide is a follow up to Running Raspberry Pi OS in a Virtual Machine with VMware

VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhance the virtual machine guest operating system's performance and improve its management. Without VMware Tools installed in your guest operating system, guest performance lacks the necessary functionality.

For example, while testing your Raspberry Pi OS installation with VMware Workstation, one of the coolest things you could do to improve testing productivity is accessing the shared folder settings per VM. However, this option is only available after installing VMware Tools.

Install VMware Tools in Raspberry Pi OS

Note: Raspberry Pi OS is a distribution of Debian Linux. This process will work for both systems.

Step 1: Mount VMware Tools

Right-click on your Raspberry Pi OS VM and select Install VMware Tools.

Step 2: Prepare VMware Tools Script 

Note: This script is taken from the VMware Community. I modified some minor things to make it simple.

#!/bin/bash

mount /dev/cdrom
cd /media/cdrom0
cp VMwareTools-*.tar.gz /tmp
cd /tmp
tar xvzf VMwareTools-*.tar.gz
cd vmware-tools-distrib/
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends libglib2.0-0
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends build-essential
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends gcc-4.3 linux-headers-`uname -r`
sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Now, there are some ways to copy this script into your VM:

• You can manually copy it. (Not recommend)
• You can create an ISO file out of the script (in a notepad) and then mount it from VMware Workstation.
• Or you can access this blog post from the Raspberry Pi OS web browser and simply copy and paste.

Step 3: Open the Terminal and create a file for the script

There are several ways to perform this, and using different editors. Let's use the vi editor. 

Open the Terminal, located near the web browser.

Create a new file with vi. Type vi tools.

Paste the script (from step 2) in the vi editor.

Press : (colon) to open the prompt bar in the bottom left corner of the window.

Type wq after the colon and hit Enter. This will save the changes and exit.

Step 4: Run the VMware Tools Script

Type sudo bash tools.

The script will run. Type y (yes) and hit Enter to all the prompts (like ten times).

VMware tools will be installed in the Raspberry Pi OS. 

Resources

VMware Workstation

Raspberry Pi Software