It is common that we need to transfer files to a virtual machine guest OS. VMware allows us to mount shared folder to the guest OS using VMware tools. Mounting VMware shared folder in a Linux guest require additional step compared to mounting shared folder in a Windows guest.

Prerequisites

VMware Fusion with a Linux Guest installed (This post is using VMware Fusion 12 with CentOS 8 as the Linux Guest)

Setup Shared Folder in VMware Fusion

1. In Virtual Machine Library window right-click on the virtual machine and click Settings…

2. Click Sharing menu under System Settings

3. Click on the Enable Shared Folders checkbox and click the + icon under the table

4. Select a folder to share and click Add

5. Go back to the Virtual Machine Library window and Start Up the virtual machine

Mounting Shared Folder to Linux Guest

1. Login and open a Terminal window and create a folder which will be the mount point for the shared folder

sudo mkdir /mnt/shared

2. Mount the shared folder to the mount point

sudo /usr/bin/vmhgfs-fuse .host:/ /mnt/shared -o subtype=vmhgfs-fuse,allow_other

If the above command doesn’t work, then you can try to use this command.

sudo mount -t vmhgfs .host:/ /mnt/shared

Now if you go to /mnt/shared, then you will see the shared folder is already mounted.