Should you decide to create your own VMware installation of Kali Linux rather than using our pre-made VMware images, you will need to follow the instructions below in order to successfully install VMware Tools in your Kali installation. You can opt to install either open-vm-tools, or the native VMWare tools.
Installing open-vm-Tools
This is probably the easiest way to get “VMWare tools” functionality inside a kali VMWare guest.
Installing VMware Tools in Kali
If open-vm-tools does not work for you, or if you prefer using native VMWare tools, begin by installing some packages that are required by the VMware Tools installer:
echo vmware-tools enabled >> /usr/sbin/update-rc.d
apt-get install gcc make linux-headers-$(uname -r)
ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r)/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r)/include/linux/
Next, mount the Vmware tools ISO by clicking “Install VMware Tools” from the appropriate menu. Once the VMware Tools ISO has been attached to the virtual machine, we mount the drive and copy the VMware Tools installer to /tmp/.
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/vmware/
cp -rf /mnt/vmware/VMwareTools* /tmp/
Then, change directory to /tmp/, extract the tarball and start the installer:
tar zxpf VMwareTools-*.tar.gz
cd vmware-tools-distrib/
./vmware-tools-install.pl
Follow the prompts for the VMware Tools installation and you are done.
Lastly, to get rid of possible VMWare service errors, edit the /etc/init.d/vmware-tools script, and at around line 876, change:
# See http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html
IFS=.
set -- `uname -r`
to :
# See http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html
IFS=.
set -- `uname -r|cut -d"-" -f1`
Once changed, proceed to restart the VMWare tool service.
Slow Mouse Movement in VMware
If your mouse movement is slow and sluggish in a Kali Linux VMware guest, try installing thexserver-xorg-input-vmmouse package in the Kali guest.
reboot
VMware Tools Won’t Compile!
This is an unfortunate reality that has often plagued us, as Kali Linux uses a bleeding edge kernel which is not always supported by VMware. On occasion, it might be required to search for “upstream compatibility VMware Tools patches” from the VMware community.
Known Issues
As of March 2nd, 2013, VMware tools will compile with kernel 3.7, barring the shared folder module. Patches exist to fix this issue..