Installing VMware Tools on Debian Linux

[Updated on 1-Apr-2017: For a long time now I haven’t bothered with installing VMware Tools manually anymore. Instead I’ve just used the open-vm-tools package included in Debian, so a plain “apt-get install open-vm-tools” does the job. I’ve understood that some features are missing when compared to the original VMware Tools, so be sure to check them if you have specific VM templating requirements. Some information in VMware blog: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2015/09/open-vm-tools-ovt-the-future-of-vmware-tools-for-linux.html. My original post follows below.]

Apparently there is no official deb installer available for installing VMware Tools on Debian Linux. Instead you need to install it manually. Here is a brief memo of actions required on Debian 6.x and 7.x:

1. In vSphere Client, use the command Guest – Install/Upgrade VMware Tools (it “inserts” the VMware Tools ISO in the CD drive of the guest)
2. Open console/SSH to the guest as root (or use sudo as needed)
3. mount /dev/cdrom /mnt
4. tar xzf /mnt/VMwareTools*
5. umount /mnt
6. apt-get update
7. apt-get install gcc make linux-headers-$(uname -r)
8. cd vmware-tools-distrib
9. ./vmware-install.pl
10. Change the install directory if wanted, otherwise pretty much proceed with Enter for each step
11. cd
12. rm -rf vmware-tools-distrib
13. shutdown -r now

Bonus memo #1: Some of the VMware Tools packages can be downloaded in http://packages.vmware.com/tools

Bonus memo #2: The ISO image for VMware Tools Linux install is found on the ESXi host in /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages