Question about accessing hard drive from Ubuntu in VMWare Player

[PPettit]

I'm running VMWare Player 2.5.2 (on a Windows XP Pro machine) and a pre-built image (Ubuntu 9.04 Beta) from vmplanet.net.

I can access my files via a network share, but I cannot figure out how to access the local hard drive from the Ubuntu environment. Can this even be done with Player?

When I run "fdisk -l", I get:
/dev/sda1 (boot) ... Linux
/dev/sda2 ... Extended
/dev/sda5 ... Linux

This leads me to three questions:
1. Shouldn't there be some kind of "/dev/hdaX ..." entry in here?
2. Does the lack of this entry mean that Player just won't let me see the drive?
3. Is there a way to overcome this in Player, or will I have to install Workstation?

 

[Provogeek]

1. No, you are looking at virtual disks in a virtual machine, you will not be presented with physical disks (unless you do an RDM, which I am sure you are not doing). Not a Linux guru my self, but what I have noticed is the devices gets the hdaX label when it is an IDE device, and it gets the sdaX label when it is a serial device (SATA, SCSI are serial). So the virtual machine was probably built on virtual SCSI.

2. null, see above.

3. The virtual machine would have need to have the hdd of the host mapped in the configuration when it was built. By default it is not on.

Look for these lines in the vmx file of the virtual machine

sharedFolder0.present = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.enabled = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.readAccess = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.writeAccess = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.hostPath = "/Dir/Path"
sharedFolder0.guestName = "NameofShare"
sharedFolder0.expiration = "never"

I haven't tried it, but you could always manually add the lines and give it a whirl.

You could also use a CIFS connection to the host over IP. Just make a windows share on the host, and mount that share on the guest.

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Brent Schmidt Senior Network Engineer
Keep IT Simple[/color red]

http://www.kiscc.com

Novell Platinum Partner Microsoft Gold Partner
VMWare Enterprise Partner Citrix Gold Partner

 

[PPettit]

What you've stated makes sense. I've got to get used to the idea that I'm working in a virtual environment.

I believe that I used CIFS (never seen the term before) to access my shared folder on the host machine. This is what I did:
1. Click "Places" on the menu bar.
2. Select "Connect to Server..."
3. Change service type to "Windows share"
4. Enter the host machine IP address for "Server:".
5. Enter all other relevant connection information, and attempt to connect.

This actually didn't solve my problem completely. The file I was trying to transfer was over 600MB and it stalled at around 3MB. I wound up transferring the file by copying it from the host machine to a flash drive, and then copying it from the flash drive to the guest OS.

In case I need to transfer another large file between a host machine and a pre-configured VM, is there a better way than the two methods that I used?

 

[SimonDavies]

Do the pre-configured VM's not have the VMTools installed on them? If so you should be able to drag from your physical machine to the virtual one fairly easily, this only works however if you have VMtools installed.

Simon

The real world is not about exam scores, it's about ability.

 

[Provogeek]

Your options all depend on how the VM was setup on VmWare Workstation. I do not use vPlayer, so I don't know exactly all the options you have available to you in that environment.

It sounds like you can establish a CIFS (Common Internet File System) connection, but you time out. I have seen this before when using a bridge connection, normally can be resolved switching the NIC to NAT mode (would require you to re-IP the guest OS to the NAT subnet).

You could also try packaging the files into an ISO. Map a virtual CDROM to the ISO then mount the CDROM on the guest.

Another option you can try is to load a mini web server (there are a couple of free Windows mini web servers on sourcefourge). Then just download the files to the guest through a web page (might want to zip them so it's a single file first).

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
Brent Schmidt Senior Network Engineer
Keep IT Simple[/color red]

http://www.kiscc.com

Novell Platinum Partner Microsoft Gold Partner
VMWare Enterprise Partner Citrix Gold Partner

 

[PPettit]

Provogeek, this VM didn't appear to have VMTools installed. I thought it might help, so I installed it. There was no change that I could detect. Maybe it works better on Workstation than it does on Player. On the other hand, there's a high probability that I could have just screwed up the install somehow.

In any case, I think I'm just going to buy Workstation. I can already tell that I'm going to get more involved with virtualization, so I need to stop screwing around with Player and start using the full-featured app.