Enabling HGFS Shared Folders on Fusion or Workstation hosted Linux VMs for open-vm-tools
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Article ID: 316336
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Updated On:
Products
VMware Desktop Hypervisor
Issue/Introduction
This article provides information on enabling hgfs in open-vm-tools installed from packages for Linux OSes that support systemd.
Resolution
Prerequisites
Open-vm-tools version is at 10.0.0 or greater
OS supports fuse
Kernel version >= 3.10 (if open-vm-tools < 10.3.0. kernel version must be >= 4.0)
Supports systemd
Create the file /etc/systemd/system/mnt-hgfs.mount with this content:
[Unit] Description=VMware mount for hgfs DefaultDependencies=no Before=umount.target ConditionVirtualization=vmware After=sys-fs-fuse-connections.mount
Create the file /etc/modules-load.d/open-vm-tools.conf with this content:
fuse
If the file already exists, add that line to the file.
Enable the system service with the command:
sudo systemctl enable mnt-hgfs.mount
This will make sure the hgfs fdirectory will be mounted after a reboot.
Make sure the 'fuse' module is loaded:
sudo modprobe -v fuse
In Workstation or Fusion, enable "Shared Folders" in "Virtual Machine Settings" > "Options", and set the folders to be shared.
The shared folders should appear in the directory /mnt/hgfs. If that is not the case, start the service with:
sudo systemctl start mnt-hgfs.mount
or reboot.
Note: The vendor may provide the functionality in a future version of the open-vm-tools package. When that happens you can remove the manually added files.