VMware tools for 32-bit Debian 6 (Squeeze) guest on 32-bit VMware host (Server 2 or ESX(i) 3.5)

Debian 6 (Squeeze) is now the distro's official release. You want it, even if the installation disc's welcome screen totally sucks. Come on Debian guys, you can do better than that. Anyways.

Installing the latest Debian as a 32-bit VMware guest is pretty straightforward, except when it comes to installing the VMware tools, especially on 32-bit VMware hosts. You will most probably get errors if you try to compile the tools included with VMware Server or if your ESX(i) 3.5 host is not up-to-date (and we all know it's not always easy to update an ESX(i) 3.5 host via VMware Infrastructure Client)...

So, whether you're using ESX(i) 3.5 or VMware Server 2 as a host, I found the easiest way to install the VMware tools for your latest and greatest 32-bit Debian guest is to do get the latest version from VMware and to install them manually. Here it goes:

• download latest patch by selecting appropriate VMware host
• from the downloaded .zip file, find and extract the file VMware-tools.tar.gz (you may need to traverse other .zip files within this one)
• extract the linux.iso file from that archive
• mount the ISO on your debian guest, using either the host's GUI or by transferring and mounting it directly from within your guest
• find the .tar.gz file that contains the tools. As of today, the latest one for VMware 32-bit is VMwareTools-3.5.0-317866.tar.gz.
• proceed with the usual installation procedure of the VMware tools