installing vmware tools: location of GCC binary? [closed]

Question

okay so I am trying to isntall VMware tools from the command line with the tar installer using these instructions: http://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/doc/ws_newguest_tools_linux.html#wp1118025

I am installing vmware tools on lubuntu which I have running as a virtual machine using vmplayer. After step 5, when responding the configuration questions on the screen, it said

the installatinon of vmware tools 9.2.3 build-1031360 for linux completed sucessfully.  you can devide to 
remove this software form your system at any time by invoking the following command:
"/usr/bin/vmware-uninstall-tools.pl".
before running vmware tools for the first time, you need to configure it by invoking  the following command:
"usr/bin/vmware-config-tools.pl". Do you want this program to invoke the command for  you now?
[yes]

I pressed enter and accepted the default [yes] value and now it says

Before you can compile modules, you need to have the following installed...
make
gcc
kernel headers of the running kernel

Searching for GCC...
the path "" is not valid path to the gcc binary. 
Would you like to change it? [yes]

What is the location of the gcc program on your machine?

I did

locate gcc

and found that there is a folder called /usr/lib/gcc, so I tried to put that in as the location but it says that the path "/usr/lib/gcc" is not valid path to the gcc library. How do I find out where the gcc binary is on my machine is?

Answer 1

sudo apt-get install build-essential is enough to get it working.

Answer 2

Install prerequisites VMware Tools for LinuxOS:

If you have RHEL/CentOS:

yum install perl gcc make kernel-headers kernel-devel -y

If you have Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get -y install linux-headers-server build-essential

• build-essential, also install: dpkg-dev, g++, gcc, lib6-dev, libc-dev, make

Extracted from: http://www.sysadmit.com/2016/01/vmware-tools-linux-instalar-requisitos.html