[lug] Linux | VMware | Xen question.. > success!<

[Ken MacFerrin]

> 
> Thanks to all for the responses.  I'm just about done compiling and 
> tweaking the new Gentoo install so I should be able to find time to load 
> up VMware & WinXP this week.  I'm going to try putting Win on a 
> secondary disk and using the multiple hardware profiles approach to 
> support both VMware and native access to XP Pro.  For curious Gentoo 
> users, there's an experimental ebuild for VMware Server (the new, free 
> replacement to VMware GSX Server) located here:
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=122500
> 
> Wish me luck :)
> -Ken

I had a chance to set this up this weekend and it's working well.  As 
suggested by folks on the list, I first setup my existing WinXP install 
to choose multiple hardware profiles when booting, then booted back into 
linux, fired up VMware Server and configured a new VM using "physical 
disk" mode to access the existing XP install.  The folks at VMware are 
even nice enough to provide a how-to for just such a situation at the 
link below  (although XP is not "officially" supported).
http://www.vmware.com/support/gsx3/doc/disks_dualmult_gsx.html

When booting into WinXP via the VM environment it did take a few VM 
reboots to get through all the driver updates and install VMware Tools 
for XP but eventually everything settled down and started working with 
the exception of Norton AV, which wanted me to "reactivate".  This 
problem was solved by uninstalling and replacing it with Grisoft AVG 
Free.  I also had to change the hostname on the XP install to something 
different than the Gentoo install to avoid conflicts with accessing 
shares on my samba server since I chose to provide the VM it's own IP 
(versus NATing).

I can now boot seamlessly into the same XP install on my second disk 
using a Gentoo host running VMware or natively via grub (with drive 
mapping setup).  One caveat that I should note is that the Win XP Pro 
install I have is a corporate edition that has the XP activation 
"features" legitimately disabled.  I'm not sure if the typical 
activation feature would play nicely with multiple hardware profiles or not.

Thanks to all for the help.
-Ken