I have installed VMWare workstation 4.5.2 on FC3-T2 using Kernel 2.6.8-1.584 on an Athlon 64. I have been able to get everything to work, but had one major problem along the way. I have a 30 GB ide disk on /dev/hdb that I use for VMWare physical images. Here is the fdisk -l output:
Disk /dev/hdb: 30.0 GB, 30020272128 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3649 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdb1 * 1 621 4988151 b W95 FAT32 /dev/hdb2 622 3649 24322410 f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/hdb5 622 1386 6144831 b W95 FAT32 /dev/hdb6 1387 1600 1718923+ 82 Linux swap /dev/hdb7 1601 3649 16458561 83 Linux
This give me 16065 sectors per cylinder and 58621185 sectors on the disk. When I configure VMWare to use this disk for physical images it creats a .vmdk that defines the physical disk. Here is the original .vmdk file:
# Disk DescriptorFile version=1 CID=fffffffe parentCID=ffffffff createType="fullDevice" # Extent description RW 58633344 FLAT "/dev/hdb" 0 # The Disk Data Base #DDB ddb.virtualHWVersion = "3" ddb.geometry.cylinders = "16383" ddb.geometry.heads = "16" ddb.geometry.sectors = "63" ddb.geometry.biosCylinders = "1024" ddb.geometry.biosHeads = "16" ddb.geometry.biosSectors = "63" ddb.adapterType = "ide"
As you will notice, the disk geometry is all wrong as well as the total size. If I try to boot up the Windows 98 image on the disk, no image is found. I am not sure where VMWare gets its information from in Fedora, but it is wrong. If I modify the file to look like the following, everything works fine:
# Disk DescriptorFile version=1 CID=dbcd9a3c parentCID=ffffffff createType="fullDevice" # Extent description RW 58621184 FLAT "/dev/hdb" 0 # The Disk Data Base #DDB ddb.toolsVersion = "5184" ddb.virtualHWVersion = "3" ddb.geometry.cylinders = "16065" ddb.geometry.heads = "255" ddb.geometry.sectors = "63" ddb.geometry.biosCylinders = "16065" ddb.geometry.biosHeads = "255" ddb.geometry.biosSectors = "63" ddb.adapterType = "ide"
I know there were geometry reporting problems in Fedora Core 2. Is this a problem for Fedora or a problem in VMWare? Just trying to help out others that might want to use physical images in VMWare.
Jim