I have fedora 20 installed on my destkop. My job gave me a VMware boot disk which I have to run when rebooting the desktop. But Is there a way to run the VMware within my OS and connect to my work network without me booting from the disk. Can I run the VMware boot disk inside my machine?

You could try running it under a virtual machine in VirtualBox maybe? Is it a live cd? I don't know if it is possible to run a live cd inside a VM on VirtualBox...it's worth a shot I guess. That's all I could think to do.

Just install VirtualBox (it's free, and should be in the repositories), and try setting up a new VM using the VMWare CD.

If needed, some help installing packages in Fedora:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US..._Software.html

Setting up VirtualBox in Fedora:
http://www.if-not-true-then-false.co...-red-hat-rhel/

Using a live cd under VirtualBox:
http://linuxtidbits.wordpress.com/20...th-virtualbox/

I don't know if these will be very helpful or not, but it's worth a try.

Make sure you aren't violating any terms of service or acceptable use policies with your work before you try it though.

Good luck!

Thanks I will try to load the VirtualBox. I am sorry if this is confusing. I apologize. You asked if this is a Live CD. This a VMWare disk, I set my boot order in my BIOS from CD first. and then load my CD in my CD-ROM. then, my CD runs a VMWare desktop environment using my physical NIC and connects to my work server.

Like you suggested. I will try that. I am thinking If I could load the CD in my CD-ROM and run the VMWare using through my Linux VirtualBox. Wondering if that is even possible?

I was trying to eliminate the process of rebooting the machine from the CD disk and instead just load the CD in the CD-ROM and load the VMWare desktop environment from the VirtualBOX. I will give it a try.

thanks for the tip.

We don't know what you have but...

If you can boot to this cd/dvd then you can most likely boot it under some vm or another pretty easily. There is little difference between a real computer and a vm to most uses. Just have to watch out for how network might work. Some vm's might do better bridged while others might do better nat'ed.

Create an iso from the disc to make it faster. I'd think it rare that they did some protection scheme.

Yes, thank you for your help. Just tested it. Popped in my VMware boot disk within the fedora desktop. I was able to connect to my network easily. At the same time I am able to browse my Fedora desktop and browse the internet. But there is quite bit of a lag. It is slow in response when moving mouse and clicking on programs or opening up tools. I set the receommended memory to 768 and 8GB space. fedora receommend. I think I should changed these settings. Hey, at lease I got it working. Exactly what I wanted to do.