Greetings fellow *NIX users.

I have been trying to get file sharing to work between my Windows 7 host machine and a variety of Linux distributions (Fedora 18 32-bit/64-bit, Kali 1.0 32-bit/64-bit, Ubuntu 12.04 32-bit/64-bit, and CentOS 6.3/6.4 32-bit/64-bit)... I tried both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the aforementioned distributions because for one reason or another, getting file sharing to work has failed. Whether it be failing to install VMware tools (manually or via yum/apt-get), not getting Samba to work, and in one case even after VMware tools was installed, I tried to go to my Windows 7 machine (I have a shared folder) from my Kali 64-bit VM (the only one that I was able to successfully install VMware tools on) and that failed with the following error message: "Unable to mount location. Failed to retrieve share list from server."

What is the easiest way to share files between a Windows 7 host and any of the above mentioned distributions? Is it to setup a shared folder on my Windows 7 machine and share it out through VMware? If so, would you happen to know why even after installing VMware tools, creating the share in Windows, sharing the folder through VMware, I am still getting the following error message: "Unable to mount location. Failed to retrieve share list from server."

Thanks in advance!

I am not familiar with doing this in VMWare, but in the latest versions of VirtualBox it's very simple to create shared folder(s).
Sorry, perhaps not the help you were looking for, but if you're not dedicated to using VMWare you could try VBox.

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in virtualbox there is an icon named shred folder that for folders that sharing between host and guest

also make sure that the network card in vm machine is bridged or any kind of connection between host and guest

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I will be sure to put the settings on bridged and try it again.

In regard to the virtualbox, is there a virtualbox equivalent to vmware tools? I ask because if not, does virtualbox allow for copy/paste, usb storage device recognition, and other vmware-tools-like features?

Yes, it allows all those things. The vmware tools equivalent is called "Guest Additions", and I've been able to successfully install it on many Linux Vboxes (ranging from Lubuntu 12.10 to Scientific Linux).

Some other issue. All of those ought to let you use guest additions if you want.

You can still use ftp or some other file transfer if you want to with out guest additions. Not sure you even need to be bridged, I always use nat and it works.

The bridged setting in VMware allows for
1.) Bridged Setting
2.) Bridged Setting with the ability to replicate network connection state

Which should it be set to?

---------- Post added 05-01-13 at 07:34 AM ----------

I have also seen a few videos and posts where NAT works.

I finally got VMware tools to work with one of my virtual machines. I will be posting how I did it later today in a different thread. Thanks for the help all!