Hello folks,

I need some help.. I am a linux noobie.. I have sucessfully installed suse9.2 on a clean drive without problem but need help installing/booting within a vmware session.. Details below:

Windows XP Pro host system
VMWare Workstation 4.5.2 build 8848

Installed SuSe 9.2 in VMWare session. For some reason it had to use text based YaST to install.. Seemed to install fine..

Specified parameters:
root partiton on /dev/sda2
swap partiton on /dev/sda1

The system then wants to boot... This is where GRUB loads and all I have is a grub> prompt.. And this is where I get totally lost and nothing I do seems to work right.. From my research on GRUB I believe I need to load the kernel and then run the boot command each with certain parameters. Can someone please help me with the syntax of each command or point me to the right commands so I can see if this thing will boot? I wont list here what I have tried thus far as I dont want to taint the thread with poor commands (or show how much I suck at this).

Your help will be much appreciated..

Thanks,
Jerid

I just want to make sure I understand here
you don't want a true dual boot system
you want to run suse from a VM ?

Some very helpful information about grub is summarised here:
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2002/0..._overview.html

axobeauvi,
You are correct.. I do not want dual boot. I want to run suse from within a vmware session. The strange thing is (and it may just be strange to me because I am new to all this) that when I installed from the same dvd media onto a true hard disk I never get to the grub prompt. It just boots and I get a suse login screen which is ideally what I want.. I would rather not even deal with grub.



abisko00,
I'll go read that info.. Thanks.

I see
perhaps the VM software identifies the drives to grub in an odd way
I mean the hd it's looking for
"from my config (true dual boot)"
title SUSE LINUX 9.2
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 vga=0x317 selinux=0 splash=silent resume=/dev/hda3 desktop elevator=as showopts
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd
is it confused to what psyical drive to read ?
look into the docs for the VM software maybe?

take a look at this http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/end...p?p_faqid=1235

You MUST install any Linux distro in VMware in text mode only. I've installed suse 9.1 many times under VMware without install or GRUB problems. When you get a GRUB prompt it is because GRUB'S config is messed up or GRUB can't find the boot parition i.e. the suse 9 install partition. You can boot after struggling with GRUB line mode syntax (assuming the suse install is still there) and then fix the GRUB config or you can reinstall the whole thing. I would do the latter.

Good to know Scott..

I think all my troubles were due to the Booting settings in YaST.. I changed to LILO and changed some other options and got the installation to work in vmware.. Im going to go back and try more installs with other options to see what differences. Perhaps there are different 'default' settings between the gui YaST and the text YaST that are confusing me..

BTW, I lost some hair myself trying to get a SUSE 9.1 VMware 5 beta machine to mount my USB 2.0 drive but I found that there is a bug specific to VMware and USB drives. The linux demesg command shows the kernel seeing the device but it won't mount as a file system. I gave up on this one.

you guys would really be better off with true dual boot systems

axobeauvi, I do not agree. With VMware (or OpenSource Xen) you can run two or three virtual machines simultaneously! Creating a new server for experimental purposes is as easy as copying a folder. Virtual machines have many other advantages too like snapshots and cloning.

I do agree with that ,but I have better luck running MS from linux VMware
not vice versa