Just a quick one today. I have been using Ubuntu Server as a staple for linux virtual machines on VMware as it is stable, and fast. I don’t like using the VMware based vmware tools, as I find it can break things on occasion. Open-VM Tools is a good substitute as it is based on the opensource offerings from VMware. It is a simple install using apt-get:
apt-get install --no-install-recommends linux-headers-virtual open-vm-dkms open-vm-tools
The “–no-install-recommends” disables the selection of all the X components, which will essentially install the whole gnome desktop environment if it’s missing on an Ubuntu server; something we don’t want on a server!
This package provides the vmxnet hardware, as well as the majority of the other VMware Tools functionality (Shutdown, Restart etc).