VMWare and Windows Partition

I finally got Vmware workstation installed. I am trying to use my
windows partition as part of a virtual machine, however, when I try to
do this I get a “Permission Denied” message. I get the same when I try
to put KTorrent downloads on the Windows Partition. And again when I try
to create desktop short cuts to folders within the windows partition.
Yet, I can navigate and open files perfectly within the file explorer. I
tried changing the owner from root to me, giving full read/write/execute
permissions, and still I get the same error message.

Any other ideas?


twjolson

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If it’s NTFS you need to have it mount with the necessary permissions:
Help: ‘HowTo Mount NTFS Filesystem Partition Read Write Access in
openSUSE 10, 11’ (http://www.swerdna.net.au/linhowtontfs.html)

Not sure how this would apply to VMWare.
I’m a VBox user myself.


Box: Linux 2.6.25.18-0.2 x86_64 | OS 11.0 | (KDE4.1.82) “3.1” | M2N4-SLI
| AMD 64 X2 5200+ | nVidia 8500GT | 2GB RAM
Lap: OS 11.0 | Celeron 550 | (KDE 4.1.82 “release 3.1” | Intel 965 GM |
Lenovo R61e | 1GB RAM

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I shall try this tomorrow and get back to you; thank you for the quick
reply.


twjolson

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It almost worked perfectly. I can copy and paste to windows, I can open
up the virtual machines I already had saved on my Windows Partition, I
can not, however, use my windows partition as the hard drive for a
virtual machine. I aslo can’t use my desktop launcher that points to
/windows/D, it says permission denied still.

What I did was gedit etc/fstab as per 'This tutorial ’
(http://en.opensuse.org/NTFS) and changed fmask=133,dmask=022 to
fmask=113,dmask=002 for the correct ntfs partition.


twjolson

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twjolson;1907806 Wrote:
> however, use my windows partition as the hard drive for a virtual
> machine.

This is highly discouraged by VMware. Raw disks should be used only
with expert understanding and still at great risk.

The danger is that ordinarily the Operating System locks files being
used, but Raw Disks bypasses this safety feature and could potentially
crash and corrupt the partition/disk. If permissions isn’t an issue, you
could already be violating safe practices and the VMware application is
trying to protect you from yourself.

Unless you like playing with fire you should just create a virtual disk
and copy the data from the physical disk into your virtual disk.


tsu2

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tsu2;1907895 Wrote:
>
> The danger is that ordinarily the Operating System locks files being
> used, but Raw Disks bypasses this safety feature and could potentially
> crash and corrupt the partition/disk.
>
> Unless you like playing with fire you should just create a virtual disk
> and copy the data from the physical disk into your virtual disk.

I know all this and have used logical volumes for virtual machines
quite a bit in VMWare under windows. Locked files isn’t a problem since
the partition I’m aiming to use won’t be booted up. I’ll be accessing
the windows partition in linux, two different partitions, two different
OS’s. Plus, the up time of the windows partition will be minimal,
otherwise I would just boot out of linux and into windows. Never had a
problem before.

I can’t just copy the data, because I am not doing this for the sake of
data. Data is easy enough. I’m more doing it to access programs that
will not and can not run under linux any other way.

On that note, any other ideas what might be going on here?


twjolson

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twjolson;1907806 Wrote:
> It almost worked perfectly. I can copy and paste to windows, I can open
> up the virtual machines I already had saved on my Windows Partition, I
> can not, however, use my windows partition as the hard drive for a
> virtual machine. I aslo can’t use my desktop launcher that points to
> /windows/D, it says permission denied still.
>
> What I did was gedit etc/fstab as per 'This tutorial ’
> (http://en.opensuse.org/NTFS) and changed fmask=133,dmask=022 to
> fmask=113,dmask=002 for the correct ntfs partition.

You might need to be a bit more descriptive what isn’t working.

So, one example I can think of which will fail is if you configure a VM
which is located on your NTFS partition and attempt to configure the
NTFS partition also as a second virtual disk.

Some parameters off the top of my head…
-What partition is your VMware application located on?
-What partition is your VM located on?
-Do you have multiple VMs running and on what partitions?
-What error are you getting, when you create a Raw Disk or when you
attempt to run a VM with the Raw Disk connected?

Personally, the only relatively safe way I would use a Raw Disk is read
only, like a virtual CDROM. What you’re doing risks both your Host and
Guest VMs plus all the data. Even if you think you might believe things
are working well and hasn’t caused a problem before, all it takes is
once for an unexplainable glitch or gremlin to cause a catastrophe.


tsu2

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