I had the same issue recently.
On my Debian-based Linux Guest System, I've learned, that VMware Tools are no longer recommended for Linux. Instead, I had to install the following packages:
sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop
Please note, that open-vm-tools alone will i.e. adjust display size, but (at least in my case) was not able to provide copy-paste-functionality, as it is x-server-related. This was then however included in open-vm-tools-desktop. It depends on you linux distribution, if there are more than one package to install.
Source:
https://github.com/vmware/open-vm-tools
"Will there be continued support for VMware Tools and OSP?
VMware Tools will continue to be available under a commercial license.
It is recommended that open-vm-tools be used for the Linux
distributions where open-vm-tools is available. VMware will not
provide OSPs for operating systems where open-vm-tools is available."