I have set up Windows 8.1 and LinuxMint on my laptop as dual boot.
I use LinuxMint for almost everything but occasionally need the Windows system as well.
I have set up LinuxMint with one big partition for everything (/, /boot, /home, etc. all in one)

I am wondering if it is possible to set up VirtualBox under Windows in a way that I can run my "real" LinuxMint as guest OS inside Virtualbox on the Windows host. Or at least something that comes as close as possible to my "real" LinuxMint without having to do everything twice. The idea would be to use the same user data files, use the same config files and installed packages, etc.

So everything I install in the "real" system will be available in the VM and the other way around. Same thing for changing files, configs, etc.

Maybe something along the lines of creating a new LinuxMint VM of the same version under Windows with only the very bare minimum (maybe the kernel and /boot ???)
Then have that VM mount my "real" LinuxMint partition and use everything else from there (like /usr, /home, /opt, etc)

Not sure what to do about things like /dev, /proc, /var/log, etc. Maybe those will be part of the VM as well.

This is a very high level idea and I have no idea if / how it can be done. I tried to Google it, but have not really found anything...

Has anyone done this, or can point me to a few links?

Thank you!

I used to do something like that years ago. I don't recall any problems, actually. There was a more seamless version without Virtualbox called colinux that was basically the same idea. The main hang ups I recall were (1) no specialized video drivers, or any other specialized hardware devices (2) I don't think Windows likes nested VMs much, so don't run Virtualbox inside your VM session.
(Edit) and if you compile your own kernel, don't be too restrictive with hardware. You can of course use Grub within VB to launch a different kernel in your VM rather than your physical machine if you need to.

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You can run physical disks under many virtual machines. Generally it isn't a standard way to run but many do it.

In your case you don't want to mount the physical disk but rather the partitions ONLY. If you mount the windows disk you will come to a stop or worse.


Search for physical disk.

See if this works.
http://www.serverwatch.com/server-tu...ualbox-vm.html

You run a virtual machine like normal. The only basic exception is that instead of using a virtual hard drive you make the vm a config file that points to a physical disk.

Linux may work fine but there may be some unique things that you may have to make generic. Maybe video but nic is generally supported in vm's.

If you mounted your physical partitions correctly and have a loader it should act like your normal linux. No need to worry about any subdirectory mounts usually.

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