It seems that from Linux Kernel version 2.6.24 the standard VMware Tools shipped with VMware ESX 3.5 (at least) do not compile.
It is necessary to download the Open Virtual Machine Tools and to make the following trick:
# tar -xzf open-vm-tools-*/modules/linux
# cd open-vm-tools-*/modules/linux
# modsrc="/usr/lib/vmware-tools/modules/source"
# for x in `ls -d v*`
# do
> mv $x ${x}-only
> tar -cf $x.tar ${x}-only
> mv ${x}-only $x
> mv $modsrc/$x.tar $modsrc/$x.tar.orig
> mv $x.tar $modsrc
> done
# vmware-config-tools.pl
Running vmware-config-tools.pl should compile all the modules without any warning.
It works fine at least with ESX 3.5.1 update1 (build 82663).
I’ve tested it with Ubuntu Server 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-19-server.
Original source is: http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/VMware_Tools
Enjoy!