From owner-freebsd-emulation Thu Jul 27 1:47:45 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org Received: from cx587235-a.chnd1.az.home.com (cx587235-a.chnd1.az.home.com [24.11.88.170]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CE0BF37B92C for ; Thu, 27 Jul 2000 01:47:40 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jjreynold@home.com) Received: from whale.home-net (whale [192.168.1.2]) by cx587235-a.chnd1.az.home.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id BAA34518; Thu, 27 Jul 2000 01:47:36 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from jjreynold@home.com) Received: (from jjreynold@localhost) by whale.home-net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id BAA05737; Thu, 27 Jul 2000 01:47:36 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from jjreynold@home.com) From: John Reynolds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14719.63272.547232.364667@whale.home-net> Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 01:47:36 -0700 (MST) To: emulation@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD/VMWare setup for dummies? In-Reply-To: <14719.26687.268058.220264@hip186.ch.intel.com> References: <14719.26687.268058.220264@hip186.ch.intel.com> X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under Emacs 20.7.1 Cc: bwithrow@nortelnetworks.com, BWithrow@BayNetworks.com Sender: owner-freebsd-emulation@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org [ On Wednesday, July 26, Robert Withrow wrote: ] > > I'm sorry, but I'm floundering like a dying mackerel. I too have been floundering with VWware, but I think I finally got at least some pieces of it licked tonight. Still gotta work on networking and getting full-screen mode working, but that'll be in another mail :) > I've got an existing FBSD 4.0Rel/Nt4 multiboot setup that I'm > trying to configure VMWare for. I've read the Hints.FreeBSD > > Questions: > > 1) When using the configuration wizard, I'm asked for a "Disk type > setting". What am I supposed to do here for an *existing* NT partition? > Remember, I'm a dummy, so give me simple, step-by-step instructions! ;-) > > a) What I did was select "existing physical disk". > b) What I get is an error dialog saying "/dev/hdx -- not present". First off, is the NT/BSD boot disk an IDE disk? I hope so. Even VMware themselves say booting a VM from scsi is at best experimental. I would seriously doubt it would work under FreeBSD, but maybe ..... What I did to get my setup working was elaborate on the setup from Hints.FreeBSD. Vladimir explained to me that under FreeBSD it's impossible (don't know the technical details) to get the right disk geometry from FreeBSD when vmware needs it. So, it crashes and burns. You can edit the .hda file like so: DRIVETYPE ide CYLINDERS 39560 HEADS 16 SECTORS 63 ACCESS "/path/to/setup/win98/disk.mbr" 0 62 ACCESS "/dev/rad0s1" 63 15374204 RDONLY "/dev/null" 15374205 39873329 As you can see, this differs slightly between what the Hints file says. As it points out you need the actual geometry which you can get from dmesg: grep ad0 /var/run/dmesg.boot ad0: 19470MB [39560/16/63] at ata0-master using UDMA3 The stuff in the [] is the c/h/s that vmware needs. Then create yourself a copy of the MBR like the Hints file says. This is where my setup differs from the hints file. My disk is bigger so I needed to get different numbers for slice 1 and the other slice (which contains my / partition for BSD as well as other random storage). I got these numbers by going into /stand/sysinstall into the partition editor for 'ad0'. Be careful not to change anything while in there :) Disk name: ad0 FDISK Partition Editor DISK Geometry: 2482 cyls/255 heads/63 sectors = 39873330 sectors Offset Size End Name PType Desc Subtype Flags 0 63 62 - 6 unused 0 63 15374142 15374204 ad0s1 2 fat 11 15374205 24499125 39873329 ad0s2 3 freebsd 165 C> 39873330 3150 39876479 - 6 unused 0 > I plugged "starting" and "ending" numbers for both slices into the example template from the Hints file. This is where I and the Hints file differ. The Hints file shows: ACCESS "/path/disk.mbr" 0 63 ACCESS "/dev/rad0s1" 63 4192902 RDONLY "/dev/null" 4192965 12305790 with the mbr and the first slice ending and starting at 63 respectively. It also starts the RDONLY slice boundaries at 4192092+63. I dunno why. The above values I used in my file haven't caused me any grief (at least thus far). Plus, VMware itself guessed at the raw partition sizes in my original .hda file like so: # Partition type: MBR RDONLY 0 62 # Partition type: Win95 FAT32 ACCESS 63 15374204 # Partition type: BSD/386 RDONLY 15374205 39873329 (so I guess the sysinstall step really wasn't necessary in retrospect but I figured since I KNEW that information would be correct why not try it?) After I modified my win98.hda file as above the VM would actually come up and VMware wouldn't segfault. The machine started booting from the mbr, I chose "F1" for 'DOS' and it began to work. The curious thing to me is that at least from my searching of the vmware site, this .hdN file format that we're using (in what the Hints file calls a "plain disk") isn't documented anywhere. Can anybody point to information on this? > 2) I gather that there is a ".hda" file you may need to constructBWithrow@BayNetworks.com (even > though nothing in Hints.FreeBSD says anything about a ".hda" file. Remember: > I'm a dummy.) How do you create that file *before* you have a config? > Or what do you do instead? Symlink? Well, I edited mine after vmware kept dumping core on me and Vladimir said "raw disks won't work--follow the Hints file and set things up like that for you IDE disk". I didn't edit the configuration after manually editing the .hda file, it just started working. > 3) I've seen all kinds of cryptic comments (at least cryptic to me; remember: > I'm a dummy) about configuring things for max performance. Could someone > list them out for me in painfully obvious plainness? Well, once I got the thing to actually boot win98 the performance REALLY sucked. This is because the VMware tools were not installed. Other people have said that running in full-screen mode is much much faster than windowed and I believe them (I'm working on that). You gotta have CRAPLOADS of ram and I'm glad I'm running an SMP system because it hogs 99% of one of my cpus all the time. However, once I went through the whole bloody process of successfully installing the vmware tools for win98 the graphics were much better even in window'ed mode. I can deal with it certainly until I debug why full-screen won't work for me. > 4) I see a recommendation to use /etc/fbtab to control access to devices, > rather than being root. I log in using XDM started via > /usr/X11R6/etc/rc.d/xdm.sh. > > a) What devices would a dummy want to use fbtab for? This was a key thing for me to figure out. I'd been running it as root (even though the Hints file said not too ... boooooo). I have this in my /etc/fbtab /dev/ttyv0 0600 /dev/console /dev/ttyv0 0640 /dev/rad0s1 /dev/ttyv0 0640 /dev/cd0c /dev/ttyv0 0640 /dev/cd1c (I've got two CD-ROMs and the console entry is so I can capture console messages with "xterm -C"). The permissions on these things was a pivotal thing for me to get correct because the CD-ROM kept not being identified by the VM and by win98 inside the VM until I did it. Also, the config editor wants /dev/cdrom by default so make the symlink accordingly :) > b) What device would a dummy use as the index when XDM is started this way? That I don't know .... If you get the POS to boot from your existing partition then proceed to install the VMware tools. I found the following URL to be VERY beneficial: http://www.vmware.com/support/reference/common/rawvideo98.html it's for win98, but I'm sure the procedure is roughly the same for NT. There were some inconsistencies in this doc which could be due to doc-rot as their product changes or the fact that I'm technically running Win98-SE which could do setups slightly differently. I also had to go into my "normal" hardware profile (booting win98 native) and delete the "VWware SVGA" device (installed after you install the VMware tools) twice ... whatever. Once you get the vmware tools installed then you can proceed to have NT detect hardware, install drivers, etc. Under my win98 install, I had to have it go through the whole bloody process before it would install a "Standard IDE controller" so that the atapi CD-ROM was detected (actually my scsi CD-ROM on the host ... NEAT!!!). Good luck. I hope to summarize my woes on some sort of web page--maybe contribute to the FreeBSD Diary or something .... -Jr -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= John Reynolds Chandler Capabilities Engineering, CDS, Intel Corporation jreynold@sedona.ch.intel.com My opinions are mine, not Intel's. Running jjreynold@home.com FreeBSD 4.0-STABLE. FreeBSD: The Power to Serve. http://members.home.com/jjreynold/ Come join us!!! @ http://www.FreeBSD.org/ =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-emulation" in the body of the message