booting windows partition inside of linux?

ralphbluecoat · 09-28-2007, 08:10 PM

I knew that mac had released something where you could boot your windows partition and your mac partition together at the same time... I thought the idea was pretty cool (but maybe very slow) I was wondering if was possible to do that on linux somehow. If there was a way to boot another partition whilst on your linux partition, I would think that would be useful and neat (and a thing to show to mac users, rubbing it in their faces that we can boot two partitions at once for free

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stress_junkie · 09-28-2007, 08:25 PM

Yes you can do that. It is called using virtual machines. You can have some virtual machine software running that will boot Windows while you are running Linux. Google for these things.
Xen
VMWare
Virtualbox

ralphbluecoat · 09-29-2007, 09:25 AM

I am familiar with virtual machines, but if im not mistaken, it uses virtual harddrives, and not actual partitions. Well, I did some research and that seems the only way to do it. Which software recommend (I heard that the free version of vmware was good)

pixellany · 09-29-2007, 10:23 AM

Virtual machine SW will set up a structure on your harddrive which looks like--eg--an NTFS partition. Is that what you meant by "virtual harddrive"?

Add to the list of things to try: Qemu

Nitpick: You don't "boot two partitions at once". You would boot the machine (host OS) and then boot the guest OS in the VM. Then both will be running together. The host OS is always going to be king.

ralphbluecoat · 10-01-2007, 05:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pixellany

Virtual machine SW will set up a structure on your harddrive which looks like--eg--an NTFS partition. Is that what you meant by "virtual harddrive"?

Add to the list of things to try: Qemu

Nitpick: You don't "boot two partitions at once". You would boot the machine (host OS) and then boot the guest OS in the VM. Then both will be running together. The host OS is always going to be king.

I probably am not using the right term. The disk image file (.img) that qemu boots from is what I meant. I took your ideas and Im running windows xp on qemu. I might switch to vmware for network reasons, but is there any way to speed up qemu?

pixellany · 10-01-2007, 07:29 AM

From my (limited) reading, I believe the fastest VM is Xen--but it requires a processor and kernel which supports it. Any VM is going to be slower than running direct on real hardware.

osor · 10-01-2007, 03:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ralphbluecoat

I probably am not using the right term. The disk image file (.img) that qemu boots from is what I meant.

With qemu (and presumably other virtualization software) use a disk image OR a real hard drive/partition (i.e., the block device). E.g., for qemu, just pass the block device for the hard-drive you want to use (make sure not to use a mounted hard drive).