“Undefined Monitor” X Windows Error After Installing VMWare Tools

After installing VMWare tools you may get the error

Undefined Monitor "vmware"

when trying to start X Windows. To fix this error do the following:

1. Open up the X Windows configuration file in a text editor such as vi. The X Windows configuration file is named xorg.conf and is normally located in the directory /etc/X11/.

vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf

2. Add the following lines to the bottom of the xorg.conf file:

Section "Monitor"
   Identifier "vmware"
EndSection

3. Save the configuration file and then try to start X Windows again. It should now start without any errors.

VMWare Infrastructure

How to Install VMWare Tools in CentOS 5

Install software needed by VMware Tools

1. Install packages to build the kernel modules

yum install gcc kernel-devel

2. Check the running kernel matches the kernel headers

uname -r             # running kernel
rpm -q kernel-devel  # installed kernel headers

3. If the two versions do not match, run

yum -y upgrade kernel kernel-devel
reboot

4. Find out where the kernel headers are (you may need this later)

ls -d /usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r)*/include

Prepare and install VMware Tools

1. From VMware Workstation: go to VM> Install VMware Tools

2. From the VM: mount the virtual cd drive

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/

3. Extract VMware Tools to /tmp/

tar -C /tmp -zxvf /mnt/VMwareTools-5.5.3-34685.tar.gz

4. Unmount the virtual cd drive

umount /mnt

5. Now run the installer

cd /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib
./vmware-install.pl

6. When asked Do you want to run vmware-config-tools.pl?, answer “Yes”.

VMWare Infrastructure