Having trouble installing VMTools in Mandrake 10.1
 

From the following installation instructions:

As root (su -), mount the VMware Tools virtual CD-ROM image, change to a working directory (for example, /tmp), uncompress the installer, then unmount the CD-ROM image.
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
cd /tmp


I'm able to get to root OK, but when I type in /tmp nothing happens. I still get the localhost@root line. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Thanks.

To change directories you need to supply two things at a minimum, the command and the path to change to.

The command is 'cd'. If you log into a konsole, as a user, you are usually in your home directory. All paths in linux are referenced from the root, '/' So, your home directory is represented as /home/yourusername.

You can check at any time where you are by typing 'pwd' and pressing enter. 'pwd' is the command present working directory.

So if you oepn a console, it will open as user in the home directory. Here is a sample of what this looks like on my machine.

I did a pwd right after opening a konsole. It tells me form the root '/' next is home and next is cliff.

To change from my home directroy to the tmp directory, I entered the command 'cd' and the relative path I wanted to go to, in this case 'tmp'. I did another 'pwd' and now from teh root directory I'm in /home/cliff/tmp.

If I had done a cd /tmp this path is diferent than cd tmp. Putting the / (slash) in says " starting at root, change to tmp. That will only work if infact I have a tmp directroy off the root.

Hope this helps.

I'm sure once I get more familiar with Linux, I'll start playing around with shells and command lines. At this point, I'd just like to install the VMTools so I can complete the install of Mandrake 10.1. If someone could give me a blow by blow description of what I need to do to complete this process, that would be great. Thanks.

I have no experience with VMTools. I did a search and here is the installation instructions form the VMTools site. Here is the link. http://www.vmsystems.net/vmtools/doc/

The code is available in zip format or tar.gz. You need to unpack the files and run build. That is about all I can help with. Good luck.