Found these two links to information about VMware Tools not working with Ubuntu 8.10. I’ve been looking for a solution to this myself since testing with Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 5…
- VMware Communities: VMware Tools don’t work on Ubuntu 8.10 …
- Frequently Asked Questions about Guest OSes
- Bug #285305: vmmouse doesn’t work with input hotplug
From the FAQ:
Tools compile cleanly on 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) but do not work
There are several aspects to this – soft ungrab not working, mouse clicks being displaced, vmware-user not starting (and so Unity and other dependent features don’t work).
Explanation
Soft ungrab not working and mouse clicks being displaced are known Ubuntu vmmouse bugs. An update is not yet available.
vmware-user not starting appears to be related to Intrepid’s autostart format having changed. A workaround is to go to System > Preferences > Sessions in the Ubuntu desktop menu and add /usr/bin/vmware-user as a startup command.
open-vm-tools may also work.
Williamo's Blog 
I have dropped the use of vmware in favour of virtualbox – performance for WinXP client was sooo unbearable, and virtualbox hums like a bee for me.
i don’t know or you already found a solution. I’m using the open-vm-tools like you suggested. (http://www.l4l.be/docs/virt/openvmtools_ubuntu810.php)
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential g++ dkms xorg-dev libgtk2.0-dev libdumbnet-dev libicu-dev
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/open-vm-tools/open-vm-tools-2008.12.23-137496.tar.gz?modtime=1230042211&big_mirror=0
sudo dkms add -m open-vm-tools -v 2008.12.23
sudo dkms build -m open-vm-tools -v 2008.12.23 -k `uname -r`
sudo dkms install -m open-vm-tools -v 2008.12.23 -k `uname -r`
cd open-vm-tools-2008.12.23-137496
./configure –disable-unity –without-kernel-modules
make
sudo make install
But will this work with Unity? I see you have -disable-unity in the ./configure options. I’d really like to get Ubuntu working with Unity.
Hi Harold,
I tried your solution but when I try to run:
sudo dkms add -m open-vm-tools -v 2008.12.23
I get “command not found”.
Any ideas?
thanks,
Raffi
Try sudo ./dkm add -m open- …
executables are run that way sometimes.