Quick Guide: Installing VMware Tools with Fedora 12
After installing Fedora 12 on a new virtual machine with VMware (I use Fusion on the Mac), the first thing you’ll likely want to do is install VMware tools. You need to install a few packages in order to make the installation seamless, however. There are countless posts around the internet with people looking for help with this. Here’s a quick 15 step guide to getting up and running.
- Download Fedora 12.
- Install the OS.
- Boot up the virtual machine.
- Open up the Terminal.
- Run “su” and type your root password to gain administrative control.
- Run “yum update” to update all the packages to the newest version.
- Reboot.
- Open up the Terminal.
- Run “yum install kernel-devel kernel-headers gcc mkinitrd”
- Reboot.
- Click the menu option in your VMware application to install VMware tools. This should put a compressed folder on the desktop.
- Expand the zip file and using the terminal, navigate into the newly created directory.
- As the root user, type “./vmware-install.pl”
- When it asks you questions and prompts you for a response, just hit enter. Everything should be properly configured at this point.
- Reboot when the script finishes. That’s it!
Once the machine reboots, you should be able to immediately play with some of the more useful features of vmware-tools. For example, you’ll notice that if you drag the edges of the window to resize it, the resolution of the Guest OS will automatically adjust on the fly. If you drag files from your Host OS into the window of the desktop OS, they will copy over. Additionally, you should be able to copy and paste between the two systems. Enjoy!

This worked so well. Thanks a bunch.
I’ve attempted to use vmware tools with several distros and this was not only one of the easiest installs but the steps worked perfectly. This will make my first try at Fedora much more pleasent.
Not sure what the problem is, but I am still not able to install Vmware Tools on my Fedora 12. I think the kernel version is more recent that the installer script. I have tried many solutions posted on various websites, but here is where it is failing every time:
Searching for a valid kernel header path…
The path “” is not valid.
Would you like to change it? [yes]
I cannot figure out what the correct path is. Can somebody please help?
@Albert Roman
Albert,
are you being sure to reboot when i mention to reboot? After you install the proper packages, you’ll need to restart in order for the installer to detect the location of the files. Hope that helps!
@Barry Ritter
Glad it worked!!!
@Kevin Hanson
Kevin,
First of all, thank you for the help and for the follow-up. I was not 100% sure if I had rebooted before, so i went ahead and did it all over again, this time rebooting as you indicated. I am still getting the exact same error as before. What do you think?
AR
Excelent!
Used with Fedora12 (2.6.31.12-174.2.22) on VMWare7 running on Windows7.
thank you!
Does not work with kernel 2.6.31.12-174.2.22.fc12.i686.PAE
Leo,
That explains it. I am running kernel 2.6.31.12-174.2.22.fc12.i686.PAE. It clearly does not work. At least, there is an explanation. I will open a ticket with Vmware to see if they have an updated version of vmwaretools.
Thanks.
AR