Installing VMware Tools on BackTrack

While creating my Pentest lab, I really had issues with the sharing of folders between the host and guest operating systems. I was running the ISOs on Oracle VirtualBox, and thought, perhaps that was the problem. So I installed an evaluation version of VMWare Workstation 9 and had the same issues. I did some research on the issues and though I should include it in an easy place to find for next time. So here goes:


 Installation Steps

On VMWare Player menu choose "File - Manage - Install VMware Tools". This will create a new drive called "VMware Tools"

Copy the *.tar.gz there to your a temporary folder.

         root@bt:~# cp /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-<version>.tar.gz /tmp/

Extract using tar -zxvf <file_name.tar.gz>

          root@bt:~# cd /tmp/
          root@bt:~# tar zxpf VMwareTools-<version>.tar.gz

KDE Users, please run the following command before installing: 

 root@bt:~#mkdir /etc/cups/ppd.

Prepare kernels source using this command: 

 root@bt:~#prepare-kernel-sources.

Navigate to the /tmp/ directoy where you extracted the tar archive(e.g. /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/) then run the vmware-install.pl script.

          root@bt:~# cd /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/ 
          root@bt:~# ./vmware-install.pl 

You will receive a series of prompts. Follow the instructions, or simply hit Enter to accept the defaults(Recommended for newbies)

Do some housekeeping.

             root@bt:~# fix-splash and then reboot:  root@bt:~#reboot

Enjoy the power of the worlds favorite collection of security assessment tools..

In a future post, we will talk about how to complete the same procedure on VirtualBox