Linux – Not able to mount/install vmware tools

The VMware Tools package that ships with VMware products contains both open source and closed source components. The Open VM Tools packages is just the open source subset of the VMware Tools package. In general, you can expect that Open VM Tools will provide the same basic features that VMware Tools does, but there may be a few extra things that VMware Tools includes. Also, if your Linux distro has a VMware Tools package in it's repositories, it is based on Open VM Tools an not VMware Tools.

UPDATE: Earlier I was reluctant to be specific about what code was in open-vm-tools vs VMware Tools because the set changes. That's still true, but I found a list from the open-vm-tools website, so I though I would include that here.

The open-vm-tools FAQ says the following about what code it contains vs VMWare Tools:

All of the non-experimental kernel modules and user level applications that have been developed solely by VMware are being released. Certain experimental drivers are planned for future release. VMware will encourage 3rd parties to release their contributions under the GPL.

More specifically:

• Drivers for devices and filesystems access
• Memory ballooning
• Shared folders
• Drag and Drop, Text and File Copy/Paste
• Clipboard sharing
• Disk wiping and shrinking
• Time synchronization
• Automatic guest screen resolution resizing
• GuestInfo (provides statistics about guest environment)
• Guest SDK (provides information about the VM)
• Soft power operations
• Multiple monitor support
• GTK Toolbox UI

Again, this set changes over time. As new functionality is released via VMware Tools, it may take some time for it to find it's way to open-vm-tools, or it may not make it there at all if VMware is unable to release it.

Since it looks like the problem is located on the mainboard the controller might be broken, so there is probably not much you can do. One last thing you could check is to see if there is something behind the connector on the mainboard that could cause shorts. Sometimes there are excessive brass spacers, that were not removed before the board was put in. In cases with poor quality the board carrier might also be bent so the board is touching it directly. Since even the drives's name does not come up correctly, it could also be some pin not being connected properly. So also make sure that no pins in the connector are bent and thus left unconnected. If the connector is dirty, some rubbing alcohol might help.

If there are no such problems (or there was one but removing it does not fix your problem) you have three options to keep the otherwise working board.

• use a drive with another connector like S-ATA or maybe USB (assuming such conector is available)
• use a ATA/S-ATA bridge to connect your drive to a S-ATA port on your mainboard (assuming there is one)
• use a separate ATA adapter on a PCI card (assuming there is an available PCI slot)

While the first option might be the most expensive, I would recommend it because it will just work. Using separate bridges or adapter cards might cause new trouble like not being able to boot or not supporting ATAPI devices.