In Ubuntu the simplest way to install the VMware tools is through apt.

sudo apt-get install open-vmware-tools

Shouldn’t have to do anything else.

You can also install the tools by hitting Install VMware tools from either the web UI, or vShpere.  This will mount a virtual CD on the OS, you can then copy the contents to a local directory in the vm.  You can then proceed to install them by extracting the tar file with

tar -xzf VMware*

cd into the new directory

cd vmware*

and run

sudo ./vmware-install.pl