[ILUG] Re: VMware

[adam beecher]

I think you might be right about it being LILO getting confused. I don't think
that the hardware profile will be a problem though - I set up a second hardware
profile, as they recommended, and sure, I'll need to go through a load of crap
the first time, but after that it should be ok. What I might do is leave LILO
out of the picture for the moment - I've just reinstalled Windows for the third
time, and as usual it overwrote the MBR - boot to Linux from a floppy, and try
it with Windows 98 this time. I'll be doing a bit of Partition Magic later on
anyway, so I'll be able to add Windows 95 as a "regular" virtual machine.

Matter of fact, I think I'll wait until I get another hard drive altogether, and
use one for Windows and one for Linux, so that leave me with another question --
since I'm crap with hardware, what's a good HD to buy? I remember seeing a
8-10gb EIDE HD in Peats recently for 140 quid, how about that?

http://www.peats.ie/cgi-local/catalog.cgi?view_cat=1&theCat=Hard+Drives

Or if anyone has any recommendations and/or opinions on setting up a nice (web)
developers system they would be much appreciated. I'd like to use Windows for
graphical development, and Linux for programming - with Apache/MySQL/Sendmail et
al running in Linux. But both running at the same time, accessible from each
other -- like I was accessing my remote machine for example. I have to presume
that this has been done before, and that's ulimately the whole point of
installing VMware, aside from testing sites in as many OS's as possible.

adam


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ilug-admin at linux.ie [mailto:ilug-admin at linux.ie]On Behalf Of Niall
> Sent: 07 May 2000 16:50
> To: ILUG
> Subject: [ILUG] Re: VMware
>
>
> On Sun, May 07, 2000 at 03:10:22PM +0100, adam beecher wrote:
>
> > Now, a question. I downloaded and installed VMware for Linux,
> because I need to
> > be able to edit sites in Windows and test in both. I had Windows 95
> running on
> > my primary partition at the time, and tried to create a virtual machine from
> > "raw disk", as instructed by the docs. Everything went fine, but
> when I tried
> > starting it, it got as far as the LILO prompt and then sent me a
> stream of "00
> > 00 00...", etc.
>
>
> When you boot this disk, LILO runs and you get the garbage (I think) because
> LILO sees a different environment than it was set up in. LILO is very fussy
> about this - try adding or removing a disk drive, for instance. When I first
> tried VMware, I gave up in despair because I couldn't even get it installed
> - didn't want it badly enought to find out what was wrong. Now I've
> converted to SuSE and it comes with VMware so it was easy enough to get
> running (though not so easy with a customised kernel).
>
> Anyway, with a working VMware on SuSE I did get my 'doze partition booting
> (I don't remember LILO problems, in fact I don't remember LILO at all, so I
> suppose I did something different to you) but it wouldn't work properly, and
> from what I deduce, I'd imagine it's very hard to get it to work. What
> happens is that 'doze boots and then finds a whole slew of different
> hardware (because it sees the eumlated things VMware provides rather than
> your real hardware) and wants to run the configuration wizard and reboot a
> bazillion times to get its act back together. Assuming that that eventually
> does happen, you're then buggered next time you want to boot that partition
> NOT under VMware because it'll see a whole slew of "new" hardware again, and
> it's wizard-reboot time all over again. Repeat ad nauseam . . .
>
> Now, I can't guarantee that that's what will happen. It's where I thought I
> was heading, and I decided to head it off at the pass and reinstall 'doze
> under VMware (simply start the VM with the 'doze CD in the drive) when it
> would find all the "correct" hardware. I did that, and it works like a
> charm. Of course it's a few hundred more MB of disk space down the toilet,
> but disks are cheap so . .
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
> Niall
>
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