During my work, I had to set up an Ubuntu 7 VM on VMWare, and copy some files out of it. Ubuntu 7 is a very old system, and some VMWare features did not work out-of-the-box.
I spent a lot of time figuring out how to transfer files between the host and the VM, so I decided to write it down here.

Here are some things I tried but did not work:

1. Shared folders: VMWare Tools for Ubuntu 7 did not work, and it was too much trouble to install it from source
2. Bridged network: The VM was not able to get an IP address from the host machine
3. NAT network: Same as above

Finally, I set up a host-only network, which worked well. Here are the steps I took:

Step 1: Confirm network interface on host machine

Identify network interface “VMnet1” on host machine, which is the default host-only network interface for VMWare.

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> ipconfig
...
Ethernet adapter VMware Network Adapter VMnet1:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::44b0:aca1:904d:4e26%5
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.198.1
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

Step 2: Configure network adapter

In order to connect to VMnet1 from inside the VM, we need to add a network adapter.
Go to VM settings, and add a network adapter:

The pre-defiend “Host-only” option did not work for me, so I chose “Custom” and selected “VMnet1” from the dropdown.

After configuring that, confirm it inside the VM:

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ifconfig

You should see a new network interface, like eth1 or ens33. In my case, it was eth1.

Step 3: In VM, edit /etc/network/interfaces

Make sure to remove the original network interfaces, and configure the newly added one like this:

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auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
    address 192.168.198.2
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    gateway 192.168.198.1

Make sure the subnet mask matches VMnet1, and the IP is in the subnet

Step 4: Restart VM networks

Restart the network service to apply the changes.

Since Ubuntu 7 uses ifupdown, the command is:

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/etc/init.d/networking restart
ping 192.168.198.1