Installing vmware tools on Gentoo guest OS

PhadeRunner · n00b Joined: 18 Apr 2002 Posts: 12 Location: UK

I've been using Gentoo for quite a while but have recently traded all my old machines in for a laptop which *groan* I must run WinXP on. Not wanting to dual-boot (because it's a pita) I decided to stick a Gentoo install on a vmware virtual machine.

It's up and running very nicely and I'm back to somewhere I like to be except one thing. I want to install the vmware tools to get the acceleration, drag & drop etc. but I trip up running the vmware-install.pl script. I've opted to put the binaries in /opt/vmware/bin (like a nice Gentoo'er) but the next Q about where to install the startup scripts has me stumped. The install script asks for the directory which contains rc[0-6].d but being Gentoo we don't actually have these. I've tried forcing it to do /etc or /etc/init.d but it moans that it can't find rc0.d and refuses to continue.

How can I get the vmware tools to install?

upales · Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2004 9:18 pm Post subject:

This is a hack...but it works. Create dummy directories "/etc/rc(0-6).d and re-run the configuration script and accept all the default values for directory names etc. The script will probably try to build a "vmhgfs" module for your kernel...this works if you are running v2.4.x of the kernel...for v2.6.x the module has problems.

Also once you add "rc-update add vmware-tools default", let me know if you can get vmware-tools to run. Somehow it does not work for me and I have to manually run "\etc\init.d\vmware-tools start" to get it to run! :cry:

I am using kernel 2.4.20-gentoo-r9 and the "vmhgfs" module gets loaded properly during autoload phase.

PhadeRunner · n00b Joined: 18 Apr 2002 Posts: 12 Location: UK