installing vmware tools: not recognizing path to 3.8.0-19-generic kernel files

user2719875 picture user2719875 · Sep 14, 2013 · Viewed 60.5k times · Source

So I am using Lubuntu and running in as VM using vmplayer and I am trying to install vmware tools. After doing

./vmware-install.pl

and doing the default settings, it is now saying

The path "" is not a valid path to the 3.8.0-19-generic kernel headers. 
Would you like to cange it? [yes]

Enter the path to the kernel header files for the 3.8.0-19-generic kernel?

and when I did

whereis 3.8.0-19-generic kernel

it says

3.8:
kernel: /usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-30/kernel /usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-19/kernel  /usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-19-generic/kernel /usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-30-generic-kernel

I tried all four of them and none of the paths worked. It still said that the path is not a valid path to the 3.8.0-19-generic/kernel.

Note that before when I did

whereis 3.8.0-generic kernel

it only gave me the '-19' kernels, but then I did

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic

to see if it would fix anything but it didn't. It added the '-30' kernels but that didn't seem to fix the problems. Any ideas on what's wrong?

Answer

user2719875 picture user2719875 · Sep 15, 2013

Edit: Remember to read the comments of this question as other users provided more up-to-date and accurate solutions.

Okay so what I did was, when it said

The path "" is not a valid path to the 3.8.0-19-generic kernel headers. 
Would you like to cange it?

I typed in 'no', so then it stopped the install. I then wrote the

usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl

command again and it automatically, I think skipped the steps, and it said

The configuration of vmware tools 9.2.3 build-1031360 for linux for this running kernel  completed
successfully. you must restart your X session before any mouse or graphics cahnges can   take  effect.
you can now run vmware tools by invoking "/usr/bin/vmware-toolbox-cmd" from the command   line.
to enable X features (e.g., guest resolution fit, drag and drop, and file and text   copy/pase),
you will need to do one (or more) of the following:
1. manually start /usr/bin/vmware-user
2. log out and lokg back into your desktop sessionl and,
3. restart your X session

to use the vmxnet driver, restart networking using the following commands:
/etc/init.d/networking stop
rmmod pcnet32
rmmod vmxnet
modprobe vmxnet
/etc/init.d/networking start

If my VMware tools does not run properly, I will reply back in this post. Also, thanks to the person who voted this down without even replying or telling me why.

Okay I started using VMware, works good! I needed to set up a shared drive between my host OS and VM and I needed to run the

sudo vmware-config-tools.pl

again and in the prompts, it said the path '/usr/bin/gcc' appears valid, the path at 'lib/modules/3.8.0-30-generic/build/include' appears to be valid (if you read my post, if you guys did not do

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic

it probably will say 'lib/modules/3.8.0-19-generic/build/include' instead of 'lib/modules/3.8.0-30-generic/build/include'). If you have '-19' and not '-30' and if it DOESN'T work, try running the two commands above and see if it works.