How to install VMWare Tools under CENTOS 5.1

1. Install software needed by VMware Tools

1.Install packages to build the kernel modules:

yum install gcc kernel-devel

2. Check the running kernel matches the kernel headers

uname -r # running kernel
rpm -q kernel-devel # installed kernel headers

3. If the two versions do not match, run

yum -y upgrade kernel kernel-devel
reboot

4. Find out where the kernel headers are (you may need this later)

ls -d /usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r)*/include


5. Install VMWARE TOOLS

5.1 # Extract VMware Tools to /tmp/

tar -C /tmp -zxvf VMwareTools-5.5.3-34685.tar.gz

5.2 Now run the installer

cd /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib
./vmware-install.pl

DONE!