mount a NT partition (VMware!)

[Sherman, Jay]

I have to second that plug - I also use VMWare, but the other way;  VMWare 
for NT, running a Linux virtual machine on my NT 4.0 workstation.  We're 
forced to use NT on the desktop for various maddening reasons, don't ask, 
but I now have a fully networked Linux desktop running in a window at the
same 
time.  I can share data to NT via Samba on the Linux virtual machine.  I 
gave it 128MB (out of 256) and it runs very fast, crash free for weeks at 
a time.  In fact, its never really crashed yet on me - it only goes down
when NT 
crashes around it, and it's never been the cause of the crash.

I've got 2 virtual machines configured right now, one with a static IP
address
and one using DHCP for when I need to boot a quick Linux box for testing
or whatever. It just looks like your PC is booting in a window, then Lilo,
then KDE
and bingo, you have another Linux box on the network.

At various times I've tested installs of RH 6.1, mandrake 7, slackware,
and debian onto virtual machines.  Samba has worked fine with all
distributions I've tested in a virtual machine.

On Linux we're testing Sybase ASE, IBM DB2 (UDB) and maybe Oracle 8i soon.
It's very nice to be able to work in virtual machines on your desk to do 
this stuff without having to spend time with dual-boot.


-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Carreiro [mailto:fcarreiro at loweryinc.com]
Sent: Monday, October 23, 2000 10:39 AM
To: Rob Tanner
Cc: Urban Widmark; Subba Rao; Samba Users
Subject: Re: mount a NT partition


FYI...  I recently started using vmware at home and LOVE IT!!!

Version 2.0.1 for Linux works great.  I've had some minor problems here 
and there.  Mainly if I let it run too long (like a few days) my system 
seems to get slower and slower until I feel the need to reboot.  If I 
just run VMWARE with NT 4.0 for as long as I need (Usually a few hours 
at most) then shutdown VMWARE everything seems to be ok. 

Also I regularly move files from one FAT16 partition into my EXT2 
partition and back again (from Linux).  NT (VMWARE) sees the files (in 
FAT16) and I'm happy.  Nice solution.  I HIGHLY recommend it to anyone 
who is forced to use Windoze :-)

Frank



Rob Tanner wrote:

> --On 10/22/00 12:06:38 PM +0200 Urban Widmark <urban at svenskatest.se> 
> wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, 21 Oct 2000, Rob Tanner wrote:
>> 
>>>  > What file system is the NT FS? FAT or NTFS? I was adviced not to
>>>  > mount NTFS system on to Linux. They are ok to be mounted in
>>>  > readonly mode but not in readwrite mode.
>>>  >
>>>  > Please correct me if that is not an issue now.
>>>  >
>>> 
>>> Unless I've just been lucky, it's not a problem (or not a problem
>>> anymore).  I'm the local perl guru (and have been much more
>>> successful
>> 
>> 
>> There seems to be some confusion here.
>> 
>> Mounting fat or ntfs on a remote machine over smbfs does not make
>> anything more or less dangerous/likely to fail. The potentially
>> dangerous operation is mounting a local ntfs partition (ie on a dual
>> boot machine) read-write.
>> 
>> /Urban
>> 
> 
> Oh!  You're right, I was answering the wrong question.
> 
> I was using dual boot for a while and tried it.  On redhat you're 
> perfectly safe, however.  The kernel as built in the distribution, 
> doesn't recognize NTFS, so you'd have to rebuild it with the 
> additional drivers to mount it anyway.  A better solution is VMWare.  
> With VMWare, both Linux and Windows run simultaneously and you can use 
> SAMBA to share common file space.  Moreover, even though the VMWare 
> virtual machine is just 4 Linux processes, the NT that I'm running 
> inside that VM is fully on the network and is a full participant in 
> the local domain.  And best of all, I don't like dual boots and now I 
> don't have any reason to have to.
> 
> -- Rob
> 
> 
>       _ _ _ _           _    _ _ _ _ _
>      /\_\_\_\_\        /\_\ /\_\_\_\_\_\
>     /\/_/_/_/_/       /\/_/ \/_/_/_/_/_/  QUIDQUID LATINE DICTUM SIT,
>    /\/_/__\/_/ __    /\/_/    /\/_/          PROFUNDUM VIDITUR
>   /\/_/_/_/_/ /\_\  /\/_/    /\/_/
>  /\/_/ \/_/  /\/_/_/\/_/    /\/_/         (Whatever is said in Latin
>  \/_/  \/_/  \/_/_/_/_/     \/_/              appears profound)
> 
>  Rob Tanner
>  UNIX and Networks Manager
>  Linfield College, McMinnville OR
>  (503) 434-2558 <rtanner at linfield.edu>