Hello everyone,

Please allow me to introduce myself. I am a new user to Linux world and I have been hearing many good things about Linux and only now have a chance to try it. I have this problem and I hope someone can point me to the right direction for the solution.
I have installed a Fedora 8 after removing Windows XP Pro. on my Toshiba laptop with SATA Fujitsu HD. The distro ran perfectly. I have been experimenting with VMWare Server to run Windows Server 2003. I partitioned my HD into two parts: Linux (/dev/hda1 for / ,hda3 for /boot, and hda4 for Swap) and Windows (/dev/hda 2).
Unfortunately the problem started when I wanted to install Server 2003 using Virtual Machine (Currently, I am experimenting with Domain Controller on Active Directory and Exchange for implementing Security Policy). The Server 2003 does not allow me to install on separate physical partition that I have prepared using fdisk from Fedora installation CD because it does not recognize the filesystem on dev/hda2 (Windows Server 2003 only see the HD as one block and fdisk from Windows recognized four partitions). I have formatted the hda with the following command mkfs2.ntfs /dev/hda2 and using fdisk -l command to re-check the filesystem type of /dev/hda2. I read that installation of any Windows OS requires a primary partition and Linux can be installed on any partition either primary or extended. Since the physical location for Windows installation in on /dev/hda2; therefore, the installation of Server 2003 failed to proceed. If I would like to run another Linux distro such as OpenSuSe or Umbuntu using VMware on a different physical partition, is this configuration possible? If yes,please give me advise on how to structure the partition since I only have approximately 57 GB of HD space. I appreciate all your inputs. Thanks!

You don't need a separate partition to run a virtual machine. Your windows server can take up the whole virtual disk. If you do it that way, would you still have the problem ?

David

Think about using virtualbox too, it's GPL, and I've had fewer problems with it. I use virtualbox with kubuntu, and it works great.

Hi David,

Thanks for your advice. I read from VMware manual that it is better to segregate the physical HD for different types OS since there are possibilities that, in this case, Windows Server might write the the space that is occupied by Fedora 8. According to VMware,it might corrupt the filesystem of Fedora. There is the main reason why I created partitions to separate these OS's. I heard about Virtual Box and will give it a try. Again, thanks for the advice!