Running Vista/Vmware/Fedora

by Estarra

Back to Mechanic's Corner.

Estarra2007-10-29 19:16:57
Maybe one of you smart folk can help me out...

I've had to purchase a new computer recently and instead of dual booting between windows and linux, I had the keen idea of using vmware player to run Fedora 7 on my new Vista Home Premium setup. However, my keen idea is not looking so keen as I can't seem to figure out how to share files between the two OS's. Has anyone else done this and/or figured out how to share files?
Unknown2007-10-29 19:33:33
A simple solution would be to run a samba server on your fc and then access it from the vista main os like you'd access any other pc on the network.
Just make sure the main os and the virtual pc share a network adapter or a virtual network adapter so you'll have networking access between the two.

If you prefer to access a share on the vista main os from the fc, you need to enable nfs sharing and then mount it on the fc.
Unknown2007-10-29 19:41:38
I agree with Waldor. I run Ubuntu on the free VMware Player under Vista Home Premium, and Samba would probably be your best bet. Personally, I always just use SSH and SCP/SFTP, pretending that the server is truly remote. Less hassle, in my opinion.

P.S. You won't be able to install the VMware tools in the free player, which means you may be limited on what you can do with file sharing and VM optimization.
Unknown2007-10-29 19:43:21
QUOTE(Estarra @ Oct 29 2007, 02:16 PM) 454255
Maybe one of you smart folk can help me out...

I've had to purchase a new computer recently and instead of dual booting between windows and linux, I had the keen idea of using vmware player to run Fedora 7 on my new Vista Home Premium setup. However, my keen idea is not looking so keen as I can't seem to figure out how to share files between the two OS's. Has anyone else done this and/or figured out how to share files?



QUOTE(waldor @ Oct 29 2007, 02:33 PM) 454258
A simple solution would be to run a samba server on your fc and then access it from the vista main os like you'd access any other pc on the network.
Just make sure the main os and the virtual pc share a network adapter or a virtual network adapter so you'll have networking access between the two.


I agree, this is the easiest way I know of to do it. There is some information here that might help. I haven't tried this with Vista, but I assume it will work the same way.

Out of curiosity, why would you try running FC on top of Vista? Most people seem to violently support either one or the other, but I don't know of many (any?) other people who run linux on top of Windows for a home computer...

EDIT: Except for Zarquan, apparently.
Unknown2007-10-29 19:51:55
Vista runs very well on my new PC, except for the little quirk here and there (like randomly and quietly killing an entire app when I'm in the File Open dialog). I need Linux for development work, and I don't have a separate, dedicated server for it... yet.
Unknown2007-10-30 01:11:25
There's probably a way to share them by downloading the Cygwin utilities. Cygwin has a lot of Linux command-line utilities.

Caedryn2007-10-30 03:18:37
Estarra, what version of VMWare are you running?

I'm running VMWare Workstation ACE Edition 6, and the way I have file transfer between my Windows/Linux systems is I use the built in VMWare Tools.

Boot your OS, then go to the VM menu, 'Install VM Tools' and proceed from there.

For Fedora, you may need to do some trickery. There's a note on installing Fedora 7 on VMWare at http://communities.vmware.com/thread/109239.

Once VMWare tools is set up, you can configure a shared folder by right clicking on the VMWare machine in the VMWare main menu, then clicking Settings, selecting 'Options', then hitting the 'Shared Folders' option. Setup is self-explanatory from there.

If you have problems, or need more details, let me know, I've got it running on a few machines already. *pat pet server racks*
Unknown2007-10-30 11:30:58
Estarra said she was using the VMware Player, so I thought it fair to assume that there is no way to install the VMware Tools. Only the full-blown VMware server/client lets you install the tools. Samba should still work, though, as long as the networking is setup correctly to assign a unique IP address to the guest OS.
Caedryn2007-10-30 23:23:35
Ah, yes.

I misread that. In that case, you probably are best off using Samba. Or possibly getting someone to make you a VM with the tools installed.

And I run reasonably heavy virtualisation - FC7, Debian, Ubuntu, Windows Server 2k8, and Solaris 10, Win XP - on top of Vista, so add me to the list.
Caedryn2007-10-30 23:32:04
Actually, you can install VMWare Tools using VMWare Player. And it's legal, apparently.

To quote Ben from VMWare:

QUOTE
VMware does not place any licensing restrictions on the use of the VMware
Tools. The whole idea with Player is that you can take a VM (with the VMware
Tools installed) and distribute it however you like.

(Obviously, it's up to you to make sure you are in compliance with the OS
licensing for any VM that you use or distribute.)

Currently Player does not support the installation of the VMware Tools in
virtual machines, since the expectation is that Player will be primarily used for
running VMs created with one of our other products (and thus the Tools will
already be installed). Adding support for Tools installation in Player is a
feature we could consider for a future release, but for the time being it is not
supported.


Actually doing this is a bit trickier. Basically, to do it, you need to obtain an archived version of VMWare Workstation, extract the iso of VMWare Tools that you want, then install it through there. There's instructions on how to do this for a Windows XP VM with an Ubuntu host here. The difference in this case is that you'd want the Linux iso, but you get the idea.

EDIT : Or you could just use VMWare Server, which is free, and allows Tools installation, as a friend of mine just pointed out. It'd be a hell of a lot easier.