[ILUG] Vmware and sata drive question

[Darragh Bailey]

Quoting jason corcoran <jason at jcorcoran.net>:

>
>
> I was using coLinux (virtual debian on a win XP box) happily for about a
> year. Our company was recently bought out and there new it policies have been
> invoked and stuffs coLinux ( they do not allow us to share Ethernet cards and
> coLinux uses this for its external connectivity)

I assumed that was exactly how vmware, xen, vserver, etc worked as well. Sharing
the same ethernet device using different IP's. I would assume that from the
network point of view they would see the same MAC address whether you use vmware
or coLinux.


> The solution they have given me is VMWare. Now My machine is a dual booter
> with Ubuntu and XP. I have created a virtual machine using my hard disk and
> it boots up Grub and starts to the boot process when I select Ubuntu. The
> problem is I have a Sata drive.
>
> If I boot Ubuntu normally all my partitions are sdaX in vmware they show up
> as hdaX. Is there a way, from grub or what ever to fool Ubuntu to using hda
> as sda ?

You can use "root=/dev/hdaX" as a kernel param for the correct root device, but
you'll still run into problems with the /etc/fstab file. If Ubuntu supports
mounting devices using labels that could be the best solution here.

so you could use "root=LABEL=/" as a kernel param for the root device. Similarly
use
LABEL=SWAP-1345   swap   ....
LABEL=/usr        /usr   ....

etc for the /etc/fstab file.


Since filesystem labels were designed to allow mounting of a filesystem at a
particular mount point even if the device names changed, this sounds perfect for
your problem.

--
Darragh

"Nothing's foolproof to a sufficently talented fool"