Copy/paste and drag&drop not working in VMware machine with Ubuntu

Suddenly copy/paste stopped working from/to Windows 8 host computer to/from ubuntu virtual machine. Ubuntu restart did not help. I tried command:

sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools

But got report I have newest version. Guest Isolation settings are enabled. What could be the scenario of fixing this problem?

3

8 Answers

I had the same problem and found that this can be fixed by executing the following commands:

1. sudo apt-get autoremove open-vm-tools
2. Install VMware Tools by following the usual method (Virtual Machine --> Reinstall VMWare Tools)
3. Reboot the VM
4. sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools-desktop
5. Reboot the VM, after the reboot copy/paste and drag/drop will work!

17

I tried the approach suggested by solution101 above, but it didn't work for me. This is how I solved the problem:

1. Open Terminal
2. sudo apt install open-vm-tools-desktop
3. restart the guest operating system

This seems to have fixed the copy-and-paste issue for me.

5

This is copied verbatim from a vmware community forum:

1. Go into VM / Settings / Options / Guest Isolation
2. UNCHECK bothcheckboxes (Enable drag and drop, Enable copy and paste) and click OK.
3. Shut down the guest, and shut down VMware Workstation
4. Reboot the host computer
5. Run VMware Workstation but do not launch the guest yet.
6. Go into VM / Settings / Options / Guest Isolation for the guest, and
7. CHECK both checkboxes
8. Power On the guest.

7

The best and working solution is restarting your VMWare application (Workstation, Fusion, etc.), not the VM itself. (provided, of course, that you have installed the VMWare tools already.)

3

You can't uncheck the checkboxes while the VM is running; they are disabled. If you do this when the VM is not running, there is no effect (VMWare Workstation 12 Pro).

In my case, somehow the guest start-up job running the VMware User Agent was removed from my xfce session autostart. You need to run /usr/bin/vmware-user-suid-wrapper at login

I can see how old this post is, but I noticed something relevant; it wasn't even Ubuntu. Apparently "Shared folders" must be enabled prior to installing open-vm-tools - also had open-vm-tools-desktop already installed and nothing worked. Reinstalling both packages does the job, seemingly when shared folder were enabled; this works instantly. With apt-get:

sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop --reinstall

Or with dnf:

sudo dnf reinstall open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop

I'd assume that when enabling "shared folder" before the OS install, it should work out of the box.

2

In my case in addition to bidirectional button activation, I had to do following steps: On the terminal of guest virtual machine run:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y make gcc perl

Now on virtual machine's main menu go: "Devices" -> "Insert Guest Additions CD image" -> wait popup to appear -> follow up installation steps -> once it's done go reboot In my case it has resolved copy&paste issue

1