VMware 4 User Manual page 152

VMware Workstation 4 User's Manual
152
3. Check operating system partition mounts. Be sure the existing disk partitions
that you plan to configure the virtual machine to use are not mounted by Linux.
4. Set the device group membership or device ownership.
The master raw disk device or devices need to be readable and writable by the
user who runs VMware Workstation. On most distributions, the raw devices, such
as /dev/hda (IDE raw disk) and /dev/sda (SCSI raw disk) belong to group-id
disk. If this is the case, you can add VMware Workstation users to the disk
group. Another option is to change the owner of the device. Please think
carefully about security issues when exploring different options here.
Often, the most convenient approach is to grant VMware Workstation users
access to all /dev/hd[abcd] raw devices that contain operating systems or
boot managers and then rely on VMware Workstation's raw disk configuration
files to guard access. This provides boot managers access to configuration files
and other files they may need to boot the operating systems. For example, LILO
needs to read /boot on a Linux partition to boot a non-Linux operating system
that may be on another drive. As noted above, you should consider the security
implications of the configuration you choose.
5. If you plan to run a second Linux installation from an existing partition as a guest
operating system and your physical computer's /etc/lilo.conf has a
memory register statement such as Append= "mem...", you may want to
adjust the append memory parameter or create a new entry in LILO for running
Linux in a virtual machine.
If the amount of memory configured in lilo.conf exceeds the amount of
memory assigned to the virtual machine, then when the virtual machine tries to
boot the second Linux installation, the guest operating system will most likely
panic.
You can create another entry in lilo.conf for running Linux in a virtual
machine by specifying a different amount of memory than what would normally
be recognized when Linux boots directly on the physical machine.
6. To configure a virtual machine to run from a raw disk partition, start the New
Virtual Machine Wizard (File > New > New Virtual Machine) and select Custom.
7. When you reach the Select a Disk step, select Use a physical disk.
8. Complete the wizard steps, specifying the appropriate disk or partition to use for
this virtual machine.
Caution: Corruption is possible if you allow the virtual machine to modify a
partition that is simultaneously mounted under Linux. Since the virtual machine
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