Today I was faced the challenge of installing VMware Tools on a Ubuntu server via command line.  I stumbled accross a step-by-step tutorial on the exact steps to accomplish this task.  I am reposting for archival purposes, but all credit goes to @justinschier from http://ghosttx.com/2012/03/how-to-install-vmware-tools-v4-on-ubuntu-11-10-server/

Written: March 13, 2012
Last Updated: April 27, 2012
Tested With: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Server, Ubuntu 11.10 Server

All the guides I found on the Internet, including VMWare’s website were outdated in some way, so I decided to write a guide of my own. I just went through these steps from start to finish on a fresh server and had no problems.

1. Use Install VMWare Tools option in VMWare Client/Console to attach media
2. Update the server
   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get upgrade
3. Create the mount point
   sudo mkdir -p /media/cdrom
4. Mount the ISO
   sudo mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

   You should see the message: mount: block device /dev/sr0 is write-protected, mounting read-only

5. Change Directory
   cd /media/cdrom
6. Copy the tar file to your /tmp directory
   sudo cp VM*.tar.gz /tmp
7. Install Build tools if necessary
   sudo apt-get install linux-headers-server build-essential
8. Change Directory
   cd /tmp
9. Unmount the ISO
   sudo umount /media/cdrom
10. Expand the tar
    sudo tar xzvf VM*.tar.gz
11. Change Directory
    cd vmware-tools-distrib
12. To prevent a potential error in the install script on Ubuntu 11.10, create a special directory
    Unable to create symlink “/usr/lib64/libvmcf.so” pointing to file ”/usr/lib/vmware-tools/lib64/libvmcf.so/libvmcf.so”.
    sudo mkdir /usr/lib64
13. Run the Install Script. The -d flag automatically answers the default to all questions. To customize it, just omit the -d.
    sudo ./vmware-install.pl -d
14. Reboot
    sudo reboot

Let me know if this worked for you!

Also, please follow me on Twitter: @justinschier