Installing VMware Tools in Kali

Should you decide to create your own VMware installation of Kali Linux rather than using the  pre-made VMware images available at Kali Linux official site, 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.

apt-get install open-vm-tools

This should be sufficient, but if you are feel that this was way too easy, then you are up for an adventure. Without knowledge of cli, what follows might look like a nightmare.

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 cups enabled >> /usr/sbin/update-rc.d
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/.

mkdir /mnt/vmware
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/vmware/
cp -rf /mnt/vmware/VMwareTools* /tmp/

Then, change directory to /tmp/, extract the tarball and start the installer:

cd /tmp/
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:

 # POSIX shell uses '!' for negation during bracket expansion.
   # See http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html
   IFS=.
   set -- `uname -r`

to :

 # POSIX shell uses '!' for negation during bracket expansion.
   # 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 the xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse package in the Kali guest.

apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse
reboot