[Solved] VMware Workstation 12 Copy and Paste with Ubuntu 16 open-vm-tools

I was trying to copy and paste from Ubuntu 16 and VMware workstation in Windows, and it didn't work. I generally SSH into the box using putty, so this usually isn't an issue, but today, I figured I may as well look into the issue.

So, first I headed over to the vendor, where I found this KB: 2073803 which states:

open-vm-tools-desktop package

This optional package extends OVT with additional user-space programs and libraries to improve the interactive functionality of virtual machines. This package depends on X and therefore must be installed only when X is available. These features are enabled by this package:
  • Enables resizing of the guest display to match host console window or the VMware Remote Console Window for vSphere
  • Enables text copy and paste operation between host and guest UI (either direction)
  • Enables drag and drop operation between guest and host (either direction) for the VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion products (not supported on vSphere) 

Who knew? Apparently there's also a devel package. I generally only install the open-vm-tools in my VM's because I generally don't manage them from the console.

To install, I used the following command:

sudo apt-get install -y open-vm-tools-desktop

After which, I needed to reboot, and copy and paste worked as expected!

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