mounts are missing on ubuntu 14.04 LTS guest, vmware player 12

[edwardotis]

Vmware Mounts are missing on ubuntu 14.04 LTS guest, vmware player 12 /mnt/hgfs is empty, even though I have shares configured that previously worked with manually built vmware tools.

[belltown]

Same problem here with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and VMware Workstation Player 12. Unable to get shared folders to work. Don't see anything mounted under /mnt/hgfs.

[rendhalver]

I am seeing similar issues in Fusion 8 and Ubuntu 14.04. My vagrant boxes hang if I try using HGFS. Is there any kind of automatic fix for this yet?

[ambertx]

I found a fix on the VMware forums, confirmed working on 16.04 using latest VMware Player 12 running on the latest WIndows 10 Insider Preview 14332, didn't even need to restart the vm.

The issue is caused by Microsoft upgrades destroying registry settings. After the upgrade you just need to check and restore the registry setting below and everything >should start to work (for Shared Folders). (No need to uninstall and install again, as this will also restore the registry, but will take significantly >longer.)

All you have to do is edit the registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\NetworkProvider\Order Name: ProviderOrder Type: REG_SZ Data: "RDPNP, LanmanWorkstation,webclient"

Modify to: Data: "vmhgfs,RDPNP, LanmanWorkstation,webclient"

Exit the registry application Then you will then have the shared folders drives and UNC paths accessible once more. No need >to reboot or log off. No need to uninstall and install tools again.`

Credit to Steve Goddard

[DanHam]

This could be related to https://github.com/bzed/pkg-open-vm-tools/issues/4. Also see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/open-vm-tools/+bug/1551558.

The problem is that the VMHGFS module was mistakenly removed from the open-vm-tools package and put into the open-vm-tools-desktop package. The final comment on the bug by bzed (Debian package maintainer for open-vm-tools) sums it up better than I can:

After investigating a bit more: all other vmhgfs tools are in open-vm-tools. But as the module was removed, they would be pretty much useless there. So I've move the vmhgfs-fuse to open-vm-tools.

This was fairly recent so I'm not sure how far the fix has progressed with respect to making it into distro repositories. This doesn't just affect Ubuntu and Debian - Red Hat and CentOS suffer from the same problem. Hopefully they will follow suite and move the module into open-vm-tools as well.

I believe on Ubuntu you can fix the problem by installing the open-vm-tools-desktop package alongside open-vm-tools. However, this has the downside that it pulls in a large number of additional packages to provide desktop centric functionality for the guest. These are generally packages and features that you probably don't want... An alternative for the moment is to use open-vm-tools and manually install the VMHGFS module using the VMware tools installer provided with VMware Workstation/Fusion to provide the required 'Shared Folders' functionality. The installer doesn't overwrite any of the open-vm-tools components (by default) and instead just installs the missing VMHGFS module. I'll admit this is a bit of a kludge but it does get shared folders working with Vagrant! Hopefully the fix will find its way into the distro's soon and a simple install of open-vm-tools will be all we need to get Shared Folders working...

Hope that helps

[747]

Same problem too, even though I got open-vm-tools-desktop installed so I'm not missing vmhgfs package by theory. The host is Win 10 build 10586 FWIW.

[ravindravmw]

This doesn't just affect Ubuntu and Debian - Red Hat and CentOS suffer from the same problem. Hopefully they will follow suite and move the module into open-vm-tools as well.

@DanHam what version of Red Hat and CentOS you are referring to? At least, in the latest open-vm-tools packages you should have everything you need in open-vm-tools for SharedFolders to function.

@747 could you please provide the details of your guest OS and version of open-vm-tools packages?

[747]

@ravindravmw According to dpkg I've installed 9.4.0-1280544-5ubuntu6.2. Guest OS is Ubuntu 14.04 as in the topic title. As for me, after I grabbed this one https://github.com/rasa/vmware-tools-patches and ran patched-open-vm-tools.sh the shared folder started working.

[DanHam]

@ravindravmw

CentOS 7.2

$ cat /etc/centos-release CentOS Linux release 7.2.1511 (Core)

$ yum list open-vm-tools ... Installed Packages open-vm-tools.x86_64 9.10.2-4.el7 @base

The version of VMware tools available from the CentOS base repo is clearly a bit behind the latest. To get shared folders working I have run the VMware Tools installer bundled with Fusion (VMwareTools-10.0.6-3595377.tar.gz). The installer does not overwrite any of the components installed by the open-vm-tools package but instead offers to enable the shared folders feature:

# ./vmware-install.pl ... The VMware Host-Guest Filesystem allows for shared folders between the host OS and the guest OS in a Fusion or Workstation virtual environment. Do you wish to enable this feature? [yes]

The vmhgfs-fuse binary is then available and the shared folders feature is enabled. This allows its use with Vagrant.

Debian

$ cat /etc/debian_version 8.5

The version of open-vm-tools available from the main repositories for Jessie is 9.4.6-1770165-8. This version does not have the required components to enable use of shared folders.

To enable shared folders with Vagrant I have installed open-vm-tools from the backports repository. The version of open-vm-tools available from the backports repository is 10.0.7-3227872-4~bpo8+1 and now includes the vmhgfs-fuse binary. There are several steps I needed to perform to get support for shared folders working with vagrant:

1/. First install the fuse package. This step is required since I have 'Install recommended packages as if they are package dependencies' turned off. Fuse is listed as a 'recommended' package.

2/. Enable the backports repository by adding the following to /etc/apt/sources.list

# Enable the backports repository deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main

3/. Update APT

apt-get update

4/. Install open-vm-tools from the backports repository

apt-get -t jessie-backports install open-vm-tools

5/. Create the required directory under which shared folders are mounted

mkdir /mnt/hgfs

I use Packer to automate building of VM's for use with Vagrant so the steps described above are actually scripted, but using the steps above means that shared folders then 'just work' with Vagrant.