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!