I have a dual-booting computer (Windows XP installed first, with Mandrake Linux right after, everything working correctly). Under Linux, I want to run VMware and emulate the windows partition. I've read the instructions on this feat at the official vmware site. Whenever I try to choose /dev/hdc (where my OS partitions are), I get a "Permission Denied". My windows ntfs partition is on hdc1 and my Linux partition is on hdc7. The reason why I find the permission denied being odd, is I added my personal user to the group "disk" like VMware said, yet still can't get permission.

Has anyone gotten this sort of thing working?

1) I believe vmware can only read fat32, not ntfs. In fact, I'm not sure it reads the raw partition itself or a directory mounted on your system. It's been a while since I played with VMWare.

2) Sharing the same windows installation between your "real" system and the "virtual" system is a bad idea(TM). You have to remember that the virtual machine looks like a completely new machine to windows. It will see all that new hardware, look at it's current configuration, and blow chunks.

The #2 part isn't bad. VMware instructs making a new hardware profile under Windows, and when you boot it under VMware, to use that and config appropriately.

I just can't get it to even attempt using the partition on my drive.

I had some problems with the dual boot method. It talks about in the documentation about how it has problems with lilo.

FYI... don't try to run your linux partion under the linux os on that partition!!!! Your system will be screwed!!!!! ... much like mine... much like mine.

I might try to install windows under vmware on linux. I bet that will work. If you get this working... let me know...

Brandito

Yeah, all the LILO stuff and not booting the the host under guest stuff was covered in the VMware site's documentation. I just need to figure out how I can get some damn access to my /dev/hdc1 partition when /dev/hdc7 is my host partition.

Okay, I can do it under root, which means it's my personal user permissions that are funked up.