[Quantian-general] Re: Quantian in VMware Player with disk access

[Gary]

Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:

>Reposting: as alioth was down yesterday and today, this may have gotten lost.
>
>Cheers, Dirk
>
>On 31 December 2005 at 15:04, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
>| 
>| I just posted the text below on my blog -- I'd love to hear from anyone who
>| is trying this on Windows if/how well it goes.
>| 
>| Cheers, Dirk
>| 
>| 
>|    Quantian in VMWare Player: Create a virtual disk with qemu
>| 
>|    A few days ago, I blogged about [1]booting/running the Quantian iso
>|    via VMware Player, a 'free as in beer' virtualization tool.
>| 
>|    Over the last few days, I have experimented a little more, perused the
>|    [2]VMware Player Forum and googled a bit. It turns out that you can
>|    employ the 'free as in speech' virtualization tool [3]qemu (using
>|    version 0.7.2 from Debian unstable is fine, looks like a newer 0.8.0
>|    it out upstream) to create a virtual disk image in vmdk format
>|    suitable for VMware. For example, the command
>| 
>|      qemu-img create -f vmdk Quantian.vmdk 512M
>| 
>|    creates a 512mb file of the given name in the in required vmdb format.
>|    By the way, qemu is smart and creates a much smaller file -- an
>|    'empty' 512mb partition occupies only 12mb.
>| 
>|    It is then only a matter of updating the [4]previously posted
>|    Quantian.vmx file to add the 'new disk'. I.e. instead of defining just
>|    one ide device, we now use two as per
>| 
>|      # CDROM Info
>|      ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
>|      ide0:0.fileName = "quantian_0.7.9.1.iso"
>|      ide0:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
>|      # edd 31 Dec 2005 adding a virtual disk file
>|      ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
>|      ide1:0.filename = "Quantian.vmdk"
>|      ide1:0.redo = ""
>|      ide1:0.deviceType = "ata-hardDisk"
>| 
>|    On the next reboot, Quantian will display a disk symbol for hdc. It it
>|    then a matter of starting a root shell in Quantian, running cfdisk or
>|    fdisk to partition the new "empty" disk drive and to add a /dev/hdc1
>|    partition (or more), running mke2fs -j dev/hdc1 to add a filesystem
>|    --- and on a subsequent reboot, the disk is ready for use.
>| 
>|    It should thus be possible to create a suitable disk file of, say, ten
>|    or so gigabytes (given that Quantian expands to around seven gigs),
>|    create a filesystem and then run knx2hd to install Quantian onto the
>|    new virtual disk, make the disk bootable and, presto!, have a virtual
>|    instance of Quantian on stateful read/write media. While my tests have
>  
>

Does that mean an Quantian installation in which applications can be  
installed and upgraded?

>|    been limited to using a Linux host, this procedure should work just
>|    the same way in Windows.
>| 
>|    Oh, and as it's still early afternoon here: Best wishes for 2006 to
>|    everyone!
>| 
>| References
>| 
>|   1. http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/computers/linux/debian/quantix/quantian_via_vmware_player.html
>|   2. http://www.vmware.com/community/forum.jspa?forumID=123
>|   3. http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/
>|   4. http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/computers/linux/debian/quantix/Quantian.vmx
>| 
>| 
>| -- 
>| Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something. 
>|                                                   -- Thomas A. Edison
>
>  
>