Setting up a VM to run XP in an up-to-date F12 box?

Paul Smith phhs80 at gmail.com
Sat Nov 28 13:04:57 UTC 2009


On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 1:01 PM, Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Can someone point me to a good step by step howto to set up Windows XP
>>  installed from an iso in a VM in F12 using kvm.  There are some XP
>>  applications that only work in XP itself rather than in wine or Crossover.
>>
>> I have not tinkered with virtualised machines before so this is a learning
>>  curve for me.
>
> If this is your first time, I can suggest to try out VirtualBox:
>
> yum install VirtualBox-OSE
>
> (it's in rpmfusion-free repo). It is far more user-friendly (from my POV) for
> a first-timer.
>
> Read the manuals in order to learn what is possible. After your first install,
> you'll probably figure out that you could have made better choices in some
> areas etc., and you'll probably go make another VM, and another, and... :-)
>
> I remember that my third VM install was pretty much perfect for me (it was
> under VMWare at the time). Now under VirtualBox I have it all working, even 3D
> acceleration (games and such).
>
> It's typically faster to install XP from an .iso file than from the CD drive
> itself. Clean, fast and useful.
>
> All in all, it's really easy, and fun to do! :-)
>
>> It is not clear where the virtualised machine would get installed by
>>  default - but it looks like it would be in /var/lib/libvirt/images which
>>  is on the root partition in my case so I made a new directory in a bigger
>>  partition with plenty of space, and bind mounted it ahead of trying to
>>  create a new VM.
>
> KVM has that path as default. AFAIK, the problem is that if you change it,
> SELinux will start yelling at you --- be prepared to deal with it, chcon your
> custom directory, semanage policies etc... VirtualBox doesn't have those
> problems. ;-)

I can also recommend VirtualBox. I am running XP on VirtualBox, which
is fast and simple.

Paul




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