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

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

book

Article ID: 316336

calendar_today

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
  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.