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

For any Live Linux system (Ubuntu, KUbuntu, LUbuntu, etc), I don't think copy/paste text can be working out of the box. However, from the above answer, the solution is simple, as far as normal Linux system is concerned, just to install open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools-desktop.

However, the last step from the above answer is,

Reboot the VM, after the reboot copy/paste and drag/drop will work!

That's problematic for a Live Linux system, because if I reboot, I'll loose everything I've just done.

So what's the magic of the reboot? Can I have the copy/paste functionality without a system reboot?

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In my case (Vmware workstation 16 pro, Windows 10 as host, and Ubuntu 20.04 desktop as a guest) I have found a solution:

  1. Check that Drag & Drop and Copy & Paste options are enabled in Guest Isolation section
  2. sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools-desktop, reboot
  3. Check if service running with 'systemctl status vmtoolsd.service' command
  4. If service is running but Copy/Paste still not working try to kickstart it with 'vmware-user' command. This should run it, so check functionality again
  5. Go to Startup Applications of your OS and add '/usr/bin/vmware-user'

Done, vmware tools should runs normally and starts automatically

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  • Thanks, so it is impossible for a Live Linux system, but only work for a desktop Linux system. I'll accept that as the answer. thx, with my +25.
    – xpt
    Commented May 4, 2023 at 2:20
  • 1. Drag & Drop and Copy & Paste are enabled in guest isolation settings. 2. open-vm-tools-desktop is the latest version and I have rebooted. 3. systemctl status vmtoosd.service says it's running. 4. I ran vmware-user. 5. Where is "startup applications" of debian? Every single set of instructions I can find online for doing this produces error messages that are never discussed or mentioned. I do already have vmtoolsd.desktop in /etc/xdg/autostart, and have rebooted. In the mean time: I have no copy & paste, exactly the same as when I started trying to enable this four full hellish days ago.
    – John Smith
    Commented Nov 10, 2023 at 9:21

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