vmware player

[Alexander Skwar]

Tony Arnold schrieb:
> On Thu, 2006-07-06 at 15:14 +0200, Eberhard Roloff wrote:
> 
>> Well, there is vmware p2v (physical2virtual) which enables you to
>> transform an existing windows installation into a vmware image.
>> However, this Product is NOT free.
>> 
>> > To do that, you'd need the full VMware product - the free
>> > VMware server would be sufficient.
>> 
>> alternatively you could use vmware workstation which you can
>> run for a 30day trial - for free.
> 
> I think I will try this route and if succesful just buy a copy of
> VMware.

Why not use the free VMware Server? Do you need the additional
features of Workstation?

> I thought there was an option in VMware to use a real partition as a
> virtual disk

Yes, there is.

> and thus be able to boot an existing Windows installation.

This would work - in principle. Problem is, that the hardware
differs *EXTREMELY*. And we all know, how well Windows copes
with changing hardware, don't we?

> I guess Windows may have a problem sorting out the change in hardware,
> especially, if I boot the system for real afterwards!

Exactly!

> One of the reasons for wanting to do it this way is I don't have enough
> space in my /home partition on Linux to create a 2G virtual disk. I have
> some unused (i.e., no partition) space on the disk, but I've used up my
> 4 partitions, and am unable to move/resize partitions, or at least I've
> not figured out how.

Lesson learned: If you do old-style partitioning (which I'd advise against
and I'd advise to use LVM for Linux), then you might want to create an
extended partition and use only partitions in an extended  partition. This
way, you at least don't have the limit of having only 4 partitions. It'll
still not nearly as flexible as LVM, but at least even "the OS from Redmond"
can cope with extended partitions.

Alexander Skwar
-- 
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