I managed to install vmware tools into my guest OS (CentOS 5.2) using the manual install method, mounting the ISO image and then running the perl installer. So far, so good.
However, the files are all mounted with the host OS uid/gid. There is likely a better solution, but given that the guest is a single user (effectively) environment, I just mapped the host fs to my guest OS uid/gid by editing the /etc/fstab file.
# Beginning of the block added by the VMware software
.host:/ /mnt/hgfs vmhgfs defaults,ttl=5 0 0
# End of the block added by the VMware software
Changes to :
# Beginning of the block added by the VMware software
.host:/ /mnt/hgfs vmhgfs defaults,ttl=5, uid=500,gid=500 0 0
# End of the block added by the VMware software
The 500/500 comes from my id on the linux guest OS, NOT the host OS.
Good luck!