It appears that when you install open-vm-tools on Ubuntu 16.04 for VMware Workstation the HGFS mount is never created. To get your shared folders to show up we need to perform a few steps.
- We need to create the /mnt/hgfs folder.
1sudo mkdir /mnt/hgfs - To mount your shares temporarily run the following command.
1sudo mount -t fuse.vmhgfs-fuse .host:/ /mnt/hgfs -o allow_other - To persist the mount you will need to edit the /etc/fstab file. Add the following line.
1.host:/ /mnt/hgfs fuse.vmhgfs-fuse allow_other 0 0 - Reboot the host to verify persistence of the mount.