Weird problem with Shared Folders in VMware Workstation - SORTED!

Hmmm, for the first time ever, I wasn't able to mount a VMware Shared Folder, using VMware Workstation 7.1.1 build-282343, running on Ubuntu 10.04.

My guest OS is a 64-bit instance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5, freshly updated using YUM.

Initially, I didn't have the VMware Tools package installed, so extracted it ( VMwareTools-8.4.3-282343.tar.gz ) from the ISO that's included with Workstation, and installed and configured it in the normal manner.

Following a reboot, I was able to choose a directory from my host OS to map as a Shared Folder, but the folder itself never appeared under /mnt/hgfs - in fact, nothing appeared under /mnt.

Digging around on the web, I found a few references to SELinux causing problems with Shared Folders, but I'm not using SELinux, having opted to disable it at installation time. I checked this by examining the file /etc/selinux/config which reads: -

# This file controls the state of SELinux on the system.
# SELINUX= can take one of these three values:
# enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced.
# permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.
# disabled - SELinux is fully disabled.
SELINUX=disabled
# SELINUXTYPE= type of policy in use. Possible values are:
# targeted - Only targeted network daemons are protected.
# strict - Full SELinux protection.
SELINUXTYPE=targeted

# SETLOCALDEFS= Check local definition changes
SETLOCALDEFS=0

I tried restarting VMware Tools, using the command: -

/etc/init.d/vmware-tools restart

but to no avail.

Finally, I ran the following command: -

/usr/sbin/vmware-tools-upgrader

which shouldn't have been necessary given that this was a fresh installation of VMware Tools but .... it worked.

After doing this final step, my Shared Folders burst into life under the /mnt/hgfs directory.

Weird but true ....