Sharing files and folders with Linux guest OS in VMWare player

1.Install the VMWare Tool
First of all, you have to install the VMWare Tool for the guest OS to enable the shared folder in this OS. Click in Player menu > Manage, > Install VMWare Tools…. You may have do download the tool before the installation start.

Start install the vmware tools

2.After the compressed installation file has been mounted to the guest OS, copy it to another writable location e.g. the Desktop folder and decompress it. Now, open the Terminal and change the working directory to the new created folder, usually named vmware-tools-distrib.

Change the working directory to the new installation folder

3.Execute the vmware-install.pl with super user privilege and accept all default value. It will automatically execute the vmware-config-tools.pl at the end of the installation. If your Linux does not have gcc and make, you have to install these package and re-run the wmware-config-tool.pl again by simply enter sudo vmware-config-tools.pl.

Config the Shared Folder in VMWare player.

1.Now, we have to VMWare tools in the guest Linux OS. We should open the virtual machine settings by click Player menu > Manage > Virtual Machine Settings. In the new dialog, choose the Options tab and enable the Shared Folder option.

Enable Share Folder in the virtual machine

2.Click the Add… button at the bottom, follow the wizard to choose a folder in the host OS and the name of shared folder in the guest OS. In the Linux guest OS, our shared folder will be mounted in the /mnt/hgfs/.

3.You can make a soft link (shortcut) to the Desktop to used this folder more easily  when working in the Linux OS by entering this command in the terminal:

$> ln -s /mnt/hgfs/shared-name ~/Desktop/shared-name

4.Now you can access the shared files and folder from you Desktop folder. The modifications in this shared folder is two-way affected by default. 

5.If you do not want the guest users write or change this shared folder content, in the previous wizard click the read-only option, you can change this option any time in the virtual machine settings screen, too.