I am running VMware Workstation on a Linux box.
When I power on a centOS (Linux) virtual machine I cannot get mouse or keyboard control of the machine. I suspect that it has something to do with the error message:
You do not have VMware Tools installed in this guest. Chose "Install VMware Tools" from the VM menu.
If I click on that menu option it inserts a virtual cd with drivers etc. This does not help me since I don't have keyboard or mouse control over the machine.
I was thinking that if I could figure out the IP address or hostname I could use any number of protocols to get into the machine (SSH comes to mind).
How can I get the IP address or hostname of this machine?
Note: I did not create this machine. A coworker created it who is no longer with the company. Would save me a lot of time if I could get into the machine. I have login credentials so that won't be a problem.
Best Answer
VMWare Tools shouldn't be required to get basic keyboard/mouse access to the machine. In a normal VMWare environment, you wouldn't be able to do anything since a fresh VM wouldn't have the tools installed.
One thing to try, if the VM is bridged, is just scan your network range with something like nmap, looking for a VMWare MAC address.
Another is to check your DHCP server for the last or nearly last address handed out to the MAC assigned to that machine.
If it's not bridged, you might not be able to get access anyway. And even if it is bridged, do you know if the firewall is enabled to block traffic to the VM?
EDIT - depending on your setup, the VMWare knowledge base has a few steps to try, among them removing and re-adding the usb controller on the VM and starting the Linux VM with no daemons running to see if that is causing issues.
How was the image created? A P2V conversion or fresh install?
Another option would be to google how to convert the disk to another format like Virtualbox and see if it can be made to boot there, to at least see if it can be made usable. Or try running it on a system running ESXi. Maybe something is broken with the image...was it working before this and suddenly stopped, or...?