Howtoforge published a guide about setting up VMware Tools under Linux
How To Set Up VMware Tools On Various Linux Distributions
This document explains how to set up the VMware Tools in the following guest operating systems: Ubuntu 7.04, Fedora 7, PCLinuxOS 2007 and Debian Etch. Installing VMware Tools in your guest operating systems will help maximize performance, provide mouse synchronization and copy & paste functionality. This article also shows a way of making VMware Tools start automatically when you start a guest operating system.
How To Set Up VMware Tools On Various Linux Distributions