Although this process is well documented on the Ubuntu community site, I decided to take notes of the exact steps that I took so that I wouldn't have to fumble through that long document next time. I'm installing the tools in a clean install of Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS.

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Add this line to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/4.1latest/ubuntu lucid main restricted

The documentation suggests doing this with apt-add-repository, but I didn't have it installed and you still have to edit /etc/apt/sources.list to remove the deb-src line.

Now, just run the following commands as root. I've removed the prompt and output so that it should be easier to just cut and paste.

wget http://packages.vmware.com/tools/VMWARE-PACKAGING-GPG-KEY.pub -q -O- | apt-key add -
apt-get install vmware-open-vm-tools-kmod-source
module-assistant prepare
module-assistant build vmware-open-vm-tools-kmod-source
module-assistant install vmware-open-vm-tools-kmod
apt-get install vmware-open-vm-tools-nox

I rebooted after that, just to make sure everything loaded up correctly.

Remember that you'll need to do this after every kernel upgrade!