Re: VMware

[Chris Barnes <chris w2s net>]

At 16:01 28/10/2000, Chris Kloiber wrote:
<snip>
> Chris Barnes wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > Thanks to whoever recommended VMware (I think it was Mike, but the original
> > message has got lost in my inbox, sorry!).
> >
> > I've downloaded the beta (2.0.3) of VMware, and I've installed Win98 under
> > it. It works (a bit slowly, but that's most probably due to my
> > partitionless install - I'm hoping to get a new hard disk for Linux and
> > reinstall it on its own partition soon). But it gives me a few
> > error/warning messages: firstly, it complains about DGA not being supported
> > and therefore accelerated mode cannot run (and I can't work out how to
> > enable it, so please help!), and more seriously, that the kernel version I
> > use (I'm not running Linux at the moment so I can't get the version number,
> > but it's whatever comes with RH7) will make data CD-ROMs appear as audio
> > CDs under Win9x guest OSes, and unreadable under WinNT/2000. Has anyone
> > else come across this problem, and is there any way of avoiding it besides
> > waiting for the stable release of the 2.4 kernel?
> >
> > Any help would be greatly appreciated...
>
> Did I misunderstand you? You did a partitionless install of Red Hat on a
> fat32 partition and then installed VMWare _inside_ that? (Holy wheels
> within wheels, Batman!) I would recommend you try installing Red Hat in
> a real ext2 filesystem, then either install VMWare to virtual disks
> (files on the ext2 filesystem) or to an otherwise unused partition.

Hehe, yeah... I am going to get a new hard disk for Linux, as soon as money 
allows - I know I should really have waited until then before installing 
VMware, but I'm the impatient type. ;o)

I'll keep your suggestions in mind when I do that, thanks. Surprisingly, my 
strange installation does work quite well though.

> DGA has something to do with Xwindows. Which video card do you have, and
> is it using an acellerated driver or the VGA16 driver? If X is set up
> correctly, you should not get errors like that.

I'm using an ATI Rage Fury 128 AGP (16MB) with the accelerated driver 
(r128). I'm currently running at 1024x768 with 16-bit colour. I'll have 
another dig around in my config files and see if I can get it sorted, 
although everything seems to work fine without DGA.

> I haven't seen problems
> with data CD's looking like audio in the guest system, but I have
> noticed Linux sometimes doesn't like it when you switch CD's in windows
> (hey! you can't take that out- I mounted it automagically!).

I think the audio CD problem only occurs with kernel 2.2.16 for some reason.

> Just re-reading... Are you using the 2.4 kernel from the /preview
> directory? That would be EVIL. If you want to play with 2.4 get a more
> recent tarball and build it yourself.

Hehe, no, I'm not that brave (or stupid <g>)... I'm going to wait until 2.4 
gets released proper before I change anything. There doesn't seem any point 
in customising my Linux installation too much at the moment since I'm going 
to have to delete it all and start again when I get my new hard disk.

Thanks for your help.

                     ----
           Chris Barnes, Rugby, UK
    Yahoo: ChrisWCUK     ICQ: 19836660
       SMS: mobile@justchris.co.uk
                     ----