Virtualization and Emulation Tips

If you have the Hardware support you should probably be using Xen instead of VMware. HOWTO_Xen_and_Gentoo

Running a real Windows XP installation in Vmware

During the first two meetings, one of questions that came up about running Windows under Linux was “Can I used my physical Windows partition in VMware under Linux”? In other words could one boot into the same Windows under VMware and the real one? Yes, but it requires a minor but vital change to your Windows installation.

Boot into XP and merge this file into the registry by saving it and double clicking it mergeide.reg.

Also verify that Atapi.sys, Intelide.sys, Pciide.sys, and Pciidex.sys exist in your C:\Windows\System32\Drivers folder. These intructions are based of this Microsoft support page. 

(under real windows)
download http://mirror.lug.udel.edu/intranet/vmware/vmware-tools.zip
unzip and run setup.exe to install vmware drivers

Now in Linux, add a new Vmware setup using the advanced physical disk mode using your device /dev/hda for example. Only check the box for your Windows parition. You may need to add your user to the disk group in the /etc/groups file. Since VMware only has access to one partiton the Windows one (no grub or root partition, you wouldn't want to boot into Linux inside Linux), you need a windows bootloader in the form of a floppy image file that you load into VMware. Download mine here xpbootfloppy.img. This disk is setup to boot Windows from /dev/hda3, if you need to change that here is how: 

(as root)
mkdir -p /mnt/disk
mount -o loop xpbootfloppy.img /mnt/disk/

Then edit the /mnt/disk/boot.ini in the TWO areas where the boot partition is specified. Save the file. 

umount /mnt/disk
mv xpbootfloppy.img /home/username/vmware/Windows\ XP\ Professional/
chown username:username /home/username/vmware/Windows\ XP\ Professional/xpbootfloppy.img

Remember that you should be able to run vmware as your normal user if the premissions are correct. Now add this floppy disk image to vmware under the floppy settings and change vmware's bios to boot from floppy.

If this information helps you move to Linux great, that's the point. Any questions email me Tyler McGee from the information page.

tux