In this tutorial, we will show you how to install VMware Tools on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, VMware Tools is a set of drivers and utilities designed to improve the overall performance, usability, and manageability of virtual machines running on VMware products. It enables features like seamless mouse integration, clipboard sharing, and drag-and-drop functionality between the host and guest operating systems. Additionally, VMware Tools optimizes the virtual hardware, enhancing graphics performance, network connectivity, and storage management. By installing VMware Tools, you can unlock the full potential of your Ubuntu 20.04 virtual machine, ensuring a smooth and efficient computing experience.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of VMware Tools on an Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) server.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- The installation process may require root or sudo privileges, so ensure that you have the necessary permissions to execute commands as an administrator.
Install VMware Tools on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa
Step 1. Before installing any packages, it’s a good practice to update the package lists to ensure you have access to the latest available versions:
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
Step 2. Installing VMware Tools on Ubuntu 20.04.
Run the following commands to install the VMware Tools server:
sudo apt install open-vm-tools
If you are running Ubuntu Desktop, to install VMware Tools run:
sudo apt install open-vm-tools-desktop
After the installation is complete, you can verify that VMware Tools are running correctly by checking the status of the related services:
sudo service open-vm-tools status
If the service is active and running, you should see an output indicating that VMware Tools are installed and operational.
Finally, restart your virtual machine for the changes to take effect as follows:
sudo reboot
Once your virtual machine reboots, you can enjoy all the goodies the Open VM Tools provides on your VMware virtual machine.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed VMware. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing VMware Tools on the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official VMware website.
