Enabling HGFS Shared Folders on Fusion or Workstation hosted Linux VMs for open-vm-tools

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

1. 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
   
   [Mount]
   What=vmhgfs-fuse
   Where=/mnt/hgfs
   Type=fuse
   Options=default_permissions,allow_other
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target
    
2. 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.
    
3. 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.
    
4. Make sure the 'fuse' module is loaded:
   
   sudo modprobe -v fuse
    
5. In Workstation or Fusion, enable "Shared Folders" in "Virtual Machine Settings" > "Options", and set the folders to be shared.
6. 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.