Ubuntu – Sharing directories are not shown

Install VM-Ware Tools on Linux

sudo apt-get -y install open-vm-tools-desktop fuse && reboot

This command mounts any files that are shared from the host into /mnt/hgfs

sudo mount -t fuse.vmhgfs-fuse .host:/ /mnt/hgfs -o allow_other

The tools can be patched manually. In vmhgfs.tar, inode.c d_alias must be changed to d_u.d_alias , put back to the tar and then recompile tools.

A script that does that (tested on 32-bit ubuntu 14.04, vmware workstation 11.1 on a windows host) is here:

#!/bin/sh -x
cd /usr/lib/vmware-tools/modules/source
tar xf vmhgfs.tar
grep -q d_u.d_alias vmhgfs-only/inode.c && echo "already patched" && exit 0
sed -i -e s/d_alias/d_u.d_alias/ vmhgfs-only/inode.c
cp -p vmhgfs.tar vmhgfs.tar.orig
tar cf vmhgfs.tar vmhgfs-only
vmware-config-tools.pl -d -m

NOTE: this makes the tools incompatible with older kernel versions, i.e. 3.13.0-45.