FreeBSD Virtual Machine: Installing VMware tools

Following the VMware documentation on how to "Manually Install or Upgrade VMware Tools in a FreeBSD Virtual Machine"

Prerequisite: Perl must be installed in the guest operating system (see previous post).


1. In vSphere client, right-click on virtual machine -> Guest -> Install/Upgrade VMware Tools

2. Mount the CD ROM drive e.g.:

mkdir /mnt/cdrom
mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /mnt/cdrom

3. Change to a temporary directory and untar the VMware Tools tar file:

cd /tmp
tar zxpf /mnt/cdrom/vmware-freebsd-tools.tar.gz
umount -f /mnt/cdrom

4. Run the installer and configure VMware Tools:

cd vmware-tools-distrib
perl ./vmware-install.pl

At the very end, the script is unable to run the /usr/local/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl

5. Run the script /usr/local/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl manually; it says the package compat6x-amd64 must be installed:

perl /usr/local/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl

6. Install the port compat6x:

cd /usr/ports/misc/compat6x && make install


7. Run the VMware tools script again, voilà!

perl /usr/local/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl

Note that when using a GUI (e.g. X windows) two additional packages can be installed to improve video and input experience.

References:
- https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp#com.vmware.vmtools.install.doc/GUID-9A1EC217-58F6-4E97-BF50-1C5581B9C55A.html
- https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/problem-with-mounting-cd-rom.30212/
- https://www.freshports.org/misc/compat6x/