Start the VMware Tools installation

Using the VMware VI Client, right click on the Linux guest and select Install/Upgrade VMware Tools.

Mounting the CD-ROM

You’ll need to mount the CD-ROM on the Linux guest.
# mount /dev/cdrom /mnt

Change the working directory to /mnt
# cd /mnt
Using the RPM installer, install VMware tools.
# rpm -Uhv VMwareTools-3.5.0-153875.i386.rpm
Unmount the CD-ROM
# umount /dev/cdrom
Starting VMware tools and make sure it starts on boot.
# service vmware-tools start
# chkconfig vmware-tools on
Run the Vmware tools configuration tool. * This will shutdown the ethernet interface, so do this from the console.

# vmware-config-tools.pl

That’s it!

Troubleshooting:

“Trying to find a suitable vmmemctl module for your running kernel.”

“None of the pre-built vmmemctl modules for VMware Tools is suitable for your running kernel. Do you want this program to try to build the vmmemctl module for your system (you need to have a C compiler installed on your system)?”

If you are using CentOS 5 like me, then you’ll need to install GCC and kernel-devel otherwise it will fail. Also, make sure your kernel version matches the kernel-devel version. This error will also present itself if your are running Xen virtualisation.

# yum install gcc kernel-devel
# yum upgrade kernel kernel-devel

Finally, reboot to load the updated kernel and try again.

Checking kernel & CentOS version

To check which kernel version you are running use uname -r

# uname -r

To find out which CentOS (or RedHat) release is installed have a look at /etc/redhat-release

# cat /etc/redhat-release

Checking Disk Space

To check disk space used / free use the df command and it will display each volume. The -h switch turns the bytes reading into GB to make it more readable.

# df -h

If you want to check the size of a particular directory then use:

# du -sh /

Configuring DNS Settings

To configure which DNS servers your Linux server will use you need to edit /etc/resolv.conf

# vi /etc/resolv.conf

Just add each name server as a new line as in the following example:

nameserver
nameserver

Changing the hostname

You’ll find the hostname of the server in two places: /etc/hosts and /etc/sysconfig/network.

# vi /etc/hosts

and

# vi /etc/sysconfig/network

Show Processor & Memory Usage

This is equivilant to the Windows Task Manager, and will show each process and the consumed CPU and RAM usage. Very useful!

# top

Show Processor Information

This command will display the processor type and speed.

# cat /proc/cpuinfo

Search command history for old commands you have forgotten!

Use the history command with grep to find previously entered commands.

# history | grep command

Compiling sendmail.mc

# m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/mail/sendmail.cf

Updating virtusertable.db from /etc/mail/virtusertable

# makemap hash /etc/mail/virtusertable.db < /etc/mail/virtusertable

Saving IPTABLES to /etc/sysconfig/iptables

# iptables-save > /etc/sysconfig/iptables