[kwlug-disc] vmware questions

[unsolicited]

Running a vm against your original partition uses 'raw disk' access. 
vs. vmware creating a huge file and using it as the vm's virtual disk. 
For such a vm as the latter, the .vmx file that describes the 
parameters of the vm contains lines such as 'scsi0.virtualDev = 
"buslogic"'.

It can be done, google searching tells (told) me so. IIRC, such lines 
as the above will have 'raw' in place of the 'buslogic' above. 
vmware's forums also seem to be a good place for information and 
questions.

Having had the same desires in the past as you lay out it's 
sufficiently non-intuitive that I haven't yet actually done it myself 
either. e.g. You need to know your disk's geometry.

FWIW, I've used vmware converter (in various incarnations) to, say, 
make a final backup of a box into a vm before rededicating that box to 
another purpose. e.g. laptops. If you're ultimately convinced that you 
will no longer directly boot XP on your current box, this may be a 
path for you. This will create the big virtual disk file - and gain 
the advantage of using standard Linux tools to manage the file, vs. 
managing an ntfs partition under Linux.

Insurance Squared Inc. wrote, On 07/31/2009 1:28 PM:
> I'm installing vmware server on my linux box and am a bewildered by the 
> process.
> 
> My machine has a native XP installed.  I then later installed Mandriva 
> on top of that as a dual boot system.  Now I installed vmware with the 
> intention of running my windows stuff without rebooting.  Can I run 
> windows through vmware by accessing the original xp install on the 
> machine?  Or do I need to start fresh, install just mandriva then 
> vmware, then install windows from my CD's using vmware?