Enabling shared folders with open-vm-tools

Question

I'm running Ubuntu 14.10 in VMware Player on Windows 7. I have installed open-vm-tools instead of VMware Tools because VMware's software was unable to compile the kernel module required for file sharing. I cannot get my shared folder to mount with sudo mount -t vmhgfs .host:/$(vmware-hgfsclient) /mnt/hgfs or sudo vmware-hgfsmounter .host:/$(vmware-hgfsclient) /mnt/hgfs. Both return Error: cannot canonicalize mount point: No such file or directory. I have no idea what this is referring to or how to fix it.

Solution 1

My way of solving this issue is to resort to vmhgfs-fuse installed with open-vm-tools.

Either mount locally using vmhgfs-fuse .host:/$(vmware-hgfsclient) ~/some_mountpoint or globally using sudo mount -t fuse.vmhgfs-fuse .host:/ /mnt/hgfs -o allow_other. To then make mounting globally persistent add the following line to your /etc/fstab:

.host:/ /mnt/hgfs fuse.vmhgfs-fuse allow_other 0 0

Solution 2

As the other answers didn't work for me, I finally got it working after long time of digging from this link : Files missing in /mnt/hgfs on Ubuntu VM? where PieCot gives the solution:

$ git clone https://github.com/rasa/vmware-tools-patches.git
$ cd vmware-tools-patches
$ ./patched-open-vm-tools.sh

Solution 3

Ubuntu 17.10 requires installing the vmhgfs driver through the proprietary VMWare Tools tar-based installation. For details see http://partnerweb.vmware.com/GOSIG/Ubuntu_17_10.html

Solution 4

On the VM make sure:

That you have folder sharing enabled

That you have at least one folder shared between the host and guest

On the Ubuntu guest:

Check /mnt/hgfs to see if you can access the folder, if your unable to do so run this tools command:

sudo vmware-config-tools.pl

Update the fstab using:

gksu gedit /etc/fstab

Use a text editor to enter the following at the end of the file:

.host:/{shared-folder} /{path-to-mount-on} vmhgfs defaults,ttl=5,uid=1000,gid=1000   0 0

The final step is to restart your vm ( you may need to restart it , or get an error saying unable to mount, just skip this and restart a few times)!

Thanks, hope this helps!

View more solutions

Comments

[Trevor Clarke]

I refered to this while answering your problem: askubuntu.com/questions/29284/…

[Melab]

I'm not using VMware Tools, so "vmware-config-tools.pl" does not exist on my installation. I'm not using it because it gave me trouble before.

[Melab]

For this I'm using open-vm-tools. I couldn't get the instructions to work with VMware's software. Do you have anything else?

[Shawn Hoover]

This answer works, although I'm not sure it's enabling shared with folders with open-vm-tools. It seems to be downloading tools directly from vmware and patching them.

[Geradlus_RU]

This was the only way I got it working (tried to build open-vm-tools from source but without a luck on Debian Jessie). One small notice make sure your user is in sudoers list otherwise you had to remove sudo call from scripts and run commands from patched-open-vm-tools.sh manually as I did

[MFB]

The only thing I would add to this solution is that you might consider other file system options, for example "allow_other,uid=1000,gid=1000,auto_unmount,defaults". I installed the guest OS by pointing VMware at the downloaded ISO image. I did not explicitly let VMware install tools for me, and initially updated the Ubuntu installation. At that point open-vm-tools was installed, I did not have to install the package manually, and vmware-config-tools.pl did not appear to be part of the installed package.

[Kenneth]

Confirmed this works for 16.04 as well.

[fmo]

Works on 17.04 too and definitely a better solution than hacking the open-vm-tools

[FourtyTwo]

Working here for Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 LTS.

[Mithril]

Ubuntu 14.04 installed open-vm-tools , but there is no vmhgfs-fuse.

[Cyrus]

With Kubuntu 16.04.3 I installed package open-vm-tools-desktop, created directory /mnt/hgf, rebooted system, added .host:/ /mnt/hgfs fuse.vmhgfs-fuse allow_other 0 0 to /etc/fstab and then mount -a.

[Daniel Alder]

verified with Ubuntu 17.10 "artful"

[ccd]

This may not work in newer versions of Ubuntu (later versions of 16.04 onwards). See: github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools/issues/248

[Étienne]

You need to replace vmhgfs with vmhgfs on recent versions, see stackoverflow.com/questions/38737254/…

[Felipe]

It didn't work for me. :-(

[Felipe]

Worked for me on Q4OS.

[Keith Bennett]

On Ubuntu 20.04, I was able to do this solely by adding this line to /etc/fstab: .host:/ /mnt/hgfs fuse.vmhgfs-fuse auto,allow_other 0 0