Void's Forums

is there some way to boot another partition while still in Linux. Like in a window.
So that i could be running SuSE and have Slackware or BeOS on another partition and be able to bring up(boot) the Slackware or BeOS partition while still in SuSE?

I haven't done it from a partition but I've done it from an image using Usermode Linux. There is also a new and some say improved way called Xen. With Xen you have to boot the Xen0 kernel on the host and then you can run other instances of Linux/BSD. Then of course there is VMware which I have booted from a partition on for the guest os (must use whole disk).

I know you don't use Fedora but they have a couple of good documents:
http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/virtualization/

Anoter good site:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/

I actually installed Xen the other day but couldn't get the Xen0 kernel to boot but I didn't really have time to mess with it or dig into the why. Maybe I'll try again tonight.

whoa... vmware can do that? I have vmware

Yes, but just make sure you don't copy data between systems (don't mount each others partitions and copy data to/from them). It could really screw things up. Also, if you are booting from your boot menu, just make SURE you don't boot your running host OS in the VMware session by accident. That will also cause big file system corruption. Also remember that all your hardware in your guest OS will be VMware emulated hardware so you'll have to tweak things accordingly in the guest os. You might have to have two configs for X, etc. It's certainly much much safer to run it from an image though.

See http://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/doc/w ... lboot.html

when i run vmware-config.pl and it asks me for the directory of the C header files... i change it from the default (/usr/src/linux/include) to /lib/modules/2.6.13-8-default/build/include (which is where it should be) and it is telling me that there is no "asm" or "linux" directories in there.... and i can plainly see using ls that there is both of those directories (albiet asm is a link to asm-x86_64). The directory i am trying to use worked to compile the modules with 5.5 beta and now im going batck to 5.0 but the modules will not compile...Am i missing out on something here?

I'm using 5.0 but I am using 2.6.12-1 kernel. One thing you will likely need to install is the vmware-any-any patch but I don't think that actually has anything to do with the vmware-config.pl script. You could debug your vmware-config.pl script and see what it's not finding. Shouldn't have to do that though. You definitely have all the headers and directories needed under the asm and linux directories right? My vmware-config.pl actually looks for a "linux", and "asm", and a "net" directory.

well i searched through and found that it was looking for ioctl32.h in a different place than it was (it was lokoing under asm/ and it was under linux/ ) so i made a symbolic link to it, Essentially the same thing with Module.symvers as well. And it compile and vmware runs. yay.

on another vmware note... how would i go about allowing the user to have access to the other partition so i can run vmware as the user?

I put my user in the "disk" group. Check your permissions on /dev/hda and see what the group is and what permissions that group has on /dev/hda. On my system it's group "disk". You'll have to log off and back on after adding your ID to the group of course.

the owner is root and the group is disk, but once i added my user to the disk group it still said that i didnt have sufficient permissons. Would making the user the owner be a "do not do" sort of thing?

But what are the "permissions". If you are in the disk group and the disk group has rw permissions then you have sufficient permissions. Remember, you need to use "whole disk" in VMware and select "/dev/hda", not "/dev/hda1" or "/dev/hda2". The OS needs to boot and see all partitions.

alright i changed the group partitions to read/write and mae the virtual machine.

But.... if i boot the VM on the other partition, when the computer starts up grub will start, and then wouldnt it have to access /boot which is on /dev/hda2 where vmware is running from? and then a whole bunch of bad things would happen?

Yes, GRUB will boot and you have to select your other OS. Again, do NOT select the one you are already booted in to. The best thing you can do is set the timeout to something like 1000 seconds so you are forced to select an OS, otherwise you can get distracted and your default OS will boot which, again, is bad, very bad. GRUB won't write anything when booting so it should be no problem if it accesses the other partition (I actually use a separate partition just for /boot).

Does one have to pay for VMware?

Yes, VMware isn't cheap although it can be very useful if you need to run multiple OSs on one machine. You can get a 30 day free trial if you wanted to test it. I've actually been running it since v1.0. I've always been holding my breath for an open source solution but there is currently no open source solution that will do everything VMware can do. There are open source solutions that will do some of what VMware can do, possibly even better than VMware in some ways depending on your needs.

I have heard rave reviews of Xen from an acquaintance of mine who does hosting and uses it to give people their own virtual servers. It has several advantages over VMware in specific areas. Xen actually comes with Fedora now but I still haven't found the time to really get in and test it. It's on my list. Of course Xen is probably closer to VMware's GSX server than VMware Workstation. I actually only have experience with their Workstation product. You can download an evaluation copy which will require you to register with them and get a 30 day trial license key.

http://www.vmware.com/
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/
http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/virtualization/