hi Gerard !

I have just been reading the VirtualBox doco, so I will give that a go first.

There are two types of documentation, official (comes with VirtualBox, generic for all OSes), and openSUSE specific (comes with openSUSE 10.3). You can find the openSUSE specific guide if you install "lessons4lizards.rpm" or here: http://forgeftp.novell.com/lfl/.html/virtualbox.html -- -Alexey Eremenko "Technologov" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Saturday 2007-12-15 at 00:16 +0100, jdd wrote:

one thing is not clear and I have yet to investigate:

I need to use a pre-existant XP install in a raw disk.

* virtualbox say "don't boot from raw disk, you can corrupt the data", so I didn't try, but is that true?

The problem is that you give windows real access to the disk, and if things in windows go wrong (a malign virus, for instance), it can corrupt the whole thing. However, if windows is using a virtualized disk, that is the most it can corrupt: the host is in control.

* vmware say "you can", but the problem I have is that my disk is a multiboot 10.3 grub menu first, then vista+xp menu. I want to boot only XP if possible in virtualbox, if not in vmware

is that possible and how?

I think you have to tell it to use the partition where XP is, not the entire disk. But, if you are thinking of sometimes booting the virtualized XP and others the real XP, from the same partition, forget it: the hardware that windows sees is different, and each time you change, it will complain that new hardware was found and please install it and reboot. Another feature of vmware is that you can take a snapshot of the system at a certain point; if days or weeks later you wish to go back, you do so and all modifications (files et all) are un-done. The trick works because it saves changes leaving the original file intact, in that mode. It is usefull to try installation of something. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4-svn0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHY9lQtTMYHG2NR9URAsKyAJ93EGuKyLZ6+WuVwawrJd7Myoo7TwCglUfr R9Lyf64J39aESWnzVOaFn8s= =AMpx -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Jerry Feldman pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

On Thu, 13 Dec 2007 23:20:36 +0200 gceruti wrote:

...

Hi Folks

I need to start getting all the household away from M$, dual boot is not the way, I would like them to load OpenSUSE and then if need be start the M$ program they need.

So some questions: I must reinstall M$, I cannot use a PC that has M$ already installed. What are the options here , wine, Crossover Office, XEN, VMWARE.

Is it possible to boot both operating systems at the same time and then switch betwen them.

Any other ideas ?.

Just trying to add a bit to what has already been stated. Probably a best approach is to install either VMWare or Virtualbox using Linux as a host OS, but it appears that Gerard has Windows already installed. Additionally, VMWare has 2 free products: 1. VMWare Player. VMWare player cannot create a virtual machine, you can only use virtual machines that have already been created.

2. VMWare Server. I had this running on my Linux laptop last summer. While this worked fine, when I started up the laptop, the Windows virtual machine would also start up. The only other issue I had with this was that my wife wanted XP so she could use the Big Brother feeds which required Real Player 10 AND MSIE for the login. In this case Crossover Office and WINE did not work. Also, occasionally, the feed video would freeze, but I think that tweaking some options could alleviate that. Other Real Player videos worked fine in XP or native Linux.

I have been using VirtualBox for over a month now and have even copied and used a VMware .vmdk disk image with it. I had to use the w2k install repair on it but it seems to work quite well. Saved having to re-install and configure w2k. -- Ken Schneider SuSe since Version 5.2, June 1998 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org