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From: Jabali Pragya on 17 Feb 2007 14:25
I am thinking of using free VMware-server to run WinXP on Mdv2007. Do I
need to install anything other than the VMware-server rpm to start with ?
Or should I get the tarball & compile it on my machine ?

I gather that once VMware is installed, I can create a virtual machine and
then install WinXP in that machine. Will this XP installation be in my
home directory or in /usr, /opt or somewhere like that ? Can I install it
in another disk, i.e, not in the Linux filesystem ?

How much disk space should I allocate for XP to run a few programs which
on the native XP installation take about 0.5 GB disk space.

Any other advise or tips will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
--
Jabali
From: Ian Rawlings on 17 Feb 2007 15:17
On 2007-02-17, Jabali Pragya <jabali(a)freeuk.com> wrote:

> I am thinking of using free VMware-server to run WinXP on Mdv2007. Do I
> need to install anything other than the VMware-server rpm to start with ?
> Or should I get the tarball & compile it on my machine ?

You need the VMWare server application and supporting binaries and the
VMWare console programme, which you can think of as being a bit like a
VNC client programme. The console programme may well be in your RPM
or in a separate RPM, it might be separate as you may want the server
app installed on one machine and the console programme installed on
several other machines, as I do. You'll also need xinetd installed on
the server as vmware server runs an authentication daemon as an xinetd
service.

> I gather that once VMware is installed, I can create a virtual
> machine and then install WinXP in that machine. Will this XP
> installation be in my home directory or in /usr, /opt or somewhere
> like that ?

It'll be anywhere you want it to be, even on an external USB disc if
you want, you can define that during the point at which you create the
virtual disc.

> Can I install it in another disk, i.e, not in the Linux filesystem ?

With some versions of VMWare you can use a physical disc for the guest
operating system, partitions and all, can't remember if that's
possible with vmware server, as I've not used that method as it tends
to restrict you excessively. It's very useful to be able to move a
virtual machine from one computer to another, and that's harder to do
with the partition method. With it using files on the host
filesystem, you can back up the virtual machine and move it elsewhere
just by copying the files.

> How much disk space should I allocate for XP to run a few programs which
> on the native XP installation take about 0.5 GB disk space.

I'd suggest 6 gig, I am running Apple iTunes inside a vmware partition
using network shares to store the music, and that fits easily inside a
6 gig partition, currently the setup is using just over 4 gig of
space.

You can either allocate all the disc space on the host filing system
at once, or can tell it to eat up space as and when it requires it, so
you could for example allocate a 10-gig virtual disc but if you only
use 2 gig, then only 2 gig of host filesystem will be used. This
slows it down a bit though, I've never bothered doing speed tests but
it's still perfectly useable with the dynamic allocation method.

--
Blast off and strike the evil Bydo empire!
From: Jabali Pragya on 17 Feb 2007 17:53
On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 20:17:28 +0000, Ian Rawlings wrote:

[snip]

Thanks very much.

--
jabali
From: Phil on 19 Feb 2007 04:31
Ian Rawlings <news06(a)tarcus.org.uk> writes:
>
> I'd suggest 6 gig, I am running Apple iTunes inside a vmware partition
> using network shares to store the music, and that fits easily inside a
> 6 gig partition, currently the setup is using just over 4 gig of
> space.
I have found that it is useful to configure my linux host to run samba, and
then configure the windows applications to store their data on the linux system
rather than within the VM.

It makes sharing between windows and linux easy, and provides data security
as the files can be backed up at the same time as linux.

Phil
From: Jabali Pragya on 19 Feb 2007 14:57
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 09:31:08 +0000, Phil wrote:

> Ian Rawlings <news06(a)tarcus.org.uk> writes:
>>
>> I'd suggest 6 gig, I am running Apple iTunes inside a vmware partition
>> using network shares to store the music, and that fits easily inside a
>> 6 gig partition, currently the setup is using just over 4 gig of space.
> I have found that it is useful to configure my linux host to run samba,
> and then configure the windows applications to store their data on the
> linux system rather than within the VM.
>
> It makes sharing between windows and linux easy, and provides data
> security as the files can be backed up at the same time as linux.
>
One more question. Can WinXP programs see outside the VM ? I normally
store data on a separate disk (Fat32) so that I can access them both from
native WinXP and Linux. Will VM allow that ?

This is very important to me. I used to run Win4Lin and Win98. Windows
programs could find data from outside the Linux system tree. I switched to
Win4LinPro as there was no W4L enabled kernel for Mdv2007. WinXp programs
from Win4LinPro cannot see anything outside the "MyDocument" directory in
my /home directory. I am thinking of VMWare for this reason.


--
jabali
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