VMWare Server, WinXP-off-disk on Fedora Core 6

[Ted Roche]

One of my current client projects requires me to VPN into their
establishment. Rather than have a second machine running Windows, I
thought I'd try running VMWare using a dual-boot (WinXPPro/Fedora Core
6) machine. A recent Linux Magazine article by Jason Perlow, "Run Your
Windows with VMWare" pointed out that VMWare can read a Windows
installation off disk and run it as if it were a virtual image, a
feature I wasn't aware of. You get the benefits of both having a VM and
being able to dual-boot. Cool! So, I set about the process of installing
such beast. I'm hung up on the last step and would appreciate advice.

VMWare offers several versions for free (as in price, not as in speech)
downloads. Their main install scripts (written in Perl) are pretty
slick, detecting problems, coaching you for the correct actions, and
advising about where more information can be found. Several cycles of
script, run, error, re-configure, install, repeat got me to a working
VMWare install. Extra clues were found in "<a
href="http://www.howtoforge.com/vmware_server_fedora_core_6">How to
Install VMWare Server on A Fedora Core 6 Desktop</a>" and "<a
href="http://www.advicesource.org/ubuntu/Run_Existing_Windows_Instalation_On_Ubuntu_With_Vmware_player.html">Run
Existing Windows Installation with VMWare Player</a>."

Some obscure permission errors (VMWare reports that it can't open the
image or some related file) were fixed by adding my login to the 'disk'
group so VMWare could read the raw disk, and giving the /dev/hda device
group-read-write access (<code>sudo chmod g+rw /dev/hda</code> - there's
a way to do this permanently...). I confirmed VMWare was installed
correctly by downloading and running one of the many VMs that can be
found at the <a href="http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/">VMWare
Virtual Appliance Marketplace</a>.

After a few tweaks to the settings in the Windows-from-disk virtual
machine configuration file windows.vmdk and generating a separate file
for the MBR from the disk, booting into the VM produced my startup GRUB
menu! Selecting a Linux partition started Linux, but selecting the
Windows partition just hung after the message "chainloader +1".

QUESTIONS: (I'll bet you've been wondering if there was a question...)

1. How do I tell Fedora that /dev/hda ought to be read-write for group
disk? (Currently owned by root, group disk, permissions brw-r-----)

2. Recommended steps for debugging the Windows configuration? (A
separate 'VMWare' hardware profile is set up, and hardware profiles are
set to prompt on startup with no timeout. The menu never appears.)

Hardware: ThinkPad T40, 1 Gb RAM, Pentium M 1.5 GHz, 80 Gb IDE HDD,

-- 
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com