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I know this should be easy, but I'm having a hell of a time figuring out where the vmware tools cdrom is (for instance it's not /dev/cdrom) and so I can't figure out how to mount it. I'm on Kali Linux, using VMware player 7. The VM I'm doing this on is Metasploitable 2(ubuntu)

I go to Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools... a little window comes up saying I should press install, then mount the cdrom in the guest vm, decompress the installer and run vmware-install.pl. However, having googled around for some time, I can't figure out where the cdrom is. Most tutorials say to do something akin to this:

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

Fine. Except there is no /dev/cdrom or indeed anything remotely similar inside /dev. So I get the error:

mount: special device /dev/cdrom does not exist

There is a ~/cdrom and a /media/cdrom and a /media/cdrom0 but all of these result in the error:

mount: /media/cdrom0 is not a block device

Which I think is due to me attempting to mount something that's not in /dev. Also, creating /dev/cdrom and attempting to mount results in the above error also.

I have checked and made sure that the vmware tools iso is in the virtual cd drive(it's connected to /usr/lib/vmware/isoimages/linux.iso on the host machine. This is done automatically by selecting Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools... ). I am at a loss as to how to continue, and any help would be much appreciated.

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  • you don't see it mounted when you run the command mount right? May 21, 2015 at 16:25
  • @FrankThomas No, it's not there
    – Totem
    May 21, 2015 at 16:36
  • Make sure the virtual cd of the guest is connected (if "connect at start" is not checked, it will not be connected automatically)
    – Dan
    May 21, 2015 at 18:40

2 Answers 2

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The answer was to mount /dev/sr0 instead of /dev/cdrom. So the following command worked:

sudo mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom

I had to create /mnt/cdrom with mkdir for this to work.

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  • This also worked for me. Can you explain why this was the solution? Still trying to learn my way around Ubuntu.
    – Erutan409
    Apr 20, 2016 at 16:03
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I had the same problem, but with vmware workstation 12 and ubuntu server. It WASN'T solved by typing sudo mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom because for whatever reason the iso was on a different drive.

The solution- after clicking on install/upgrade VMware Tools type

blkid -c /dev/null

The above command shows all mounted and unmounted drives. I saw /dev/sr1: LABEL=”VMware Tools” TYPE=”iso9660”

I used the above information to determine which drive to mount. Next type

sudo mkdir /mnt/cdrom
sudo mount /dev/sr1 /mnt/cdrom
ls /mnt/cdrom

You should see information similar to the picture below vmware-tools version

Use that information to determine which version you need, then (adjusting the version as appropriate) type

tar xzvf /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-10.0.6-3595377.tar.gz -C /tmp/
cd /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/
sudo ./vmware-install.pl –d

and you are done. I hope this helps someone.

vmware after installation information

RESEARCH

blkid information

How to install vmware-tools from command line using ubuntu server

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