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
> [...]