"Reinstall VMware Tools" dimmed - for the Ubuntu Server ARM64, can't paste from the host

[DayRider]

I have Ubuntu Server ARM64 installed on a Mac with M1 Pro.  I found that drag-and-drop / copy-and-paste from the Mac to Ubuntu doesn't work. The same thing works on the Windows 11 Pro VM.  I checked Ubuntu VM Settings and the Isolation for DnD and CnP are both checked.  When Ubuntu is shut down, the VMware Fusion / Virtual Machine pull-down menu has Install VMware Tools dimmed. When the Ubuntu is running, the Virtual Machine pull-down menu has Reinstall VMware Tools dimmed. 

What's happened and how to fix it?

[Technogeezer]

If you are running a console (or “tty”) session in your Ubuntu Server (that is without a GUI/GNOME environment) then there is no copy/paste/drag/drop available. These on,y work with a graphical desktop session which is not the default for Ubuntu server.

If you are running a graphical session - you need to make sure that both open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools-desktop packages are installed from the distros repos. But note that drag/drop only works for X11 sessions. The default for Ubuntu is Wayland. (Copy/paste works for both Wayland and X11 sessions).

The Fusion menu item for VMware Tools installation is always grayed out for Linux VMs. That’s because a) VMware recommends use of open-vM-tools provided through the distro’s repos, and b) ther are no VMware Tools packages that are able to be installed by Fusion on Linux ARM )again, use open-vm-tools from the vendor’s repos).