Hello,

I have some news, but still no solutions.

For information, I found only 3 interesting threads that could be linked to the subject :

http://communities.vmware.com/message/757524#757524

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1027198#1027198

http://communities.vmware.com/message/681661#681661

Only the third one is really interesting. (but does not work for me)

Here I recall the context:

I have a triple-native boot on my MacBookPro : Leopard/WinXP/Ubuntu. They work great on native boot. My concern is to make them work in VMWare, as "rawdisks".

To do that, the wmware-radiskcreator tool can be used. It creates .vmdk and -pt.vmdk files, that are upgraded to the new Fusion 2.0 format when associated to a virtual machine.

1) First problem, solved : GRUB prevents WinXP to launch

In my previous post, I could not load WinXP, because GRUB was hanging VMWare Fusion 2.0 (without any error).

I have solved that by

-restoring the MBR through Windows Install disk

-Installing grub again, but on /dev/sda3 (which is /dev/disk0s3, which is my Linux partition). Linux can still natively boot. Indeed, ReFit allows me to select the Linux partition on a native boot, which is followed by the grub menu, but only for Linux ! WinXP does not have to pass trough GRUB any more.

2) Second problem, unsolved:

In this new configuration, my triple-native-boot work, WinXP work in VMWare Fusion, but Linux does not boot in VMWare Fusion. It looks for a boot device, try to find it by DHCP, and finally fails. It is not able to find the /boot directory on the /dev/sda3 parittion.

I already tried to set the /dev/sda3 partition as active, with fdisk. It is now active, but that does not seem to help.

3)My questions :

Is there any way to tune (by hand ?) the linux vm file to help VMWare Fusion boot the Linux ?

Is there any way to edit the -pt.vmdk file to tune the partition table ?

What is the policy of VMWare developers regading GRUB ? Are there any plans for future support ?

Regards,

Pierre Chatelier

>Are you trying to just boot your BootCamp VM that Fusion automatically created?

No, I have already used the rawdiskcreator to create the VM using my physical partitions. My concern is to boot them, which is a problem because GRUB is installed on the Linux partition.

Hello,

Incredible ! It now works.

I did not realize that I could enter the BIOS, and I did not try that before.

I did what you do : check that the VMWare Virtual ID was recognized as Primary Master (it was), that it was bootable (it was). I just changed the boot order, without great confidence.

And it worked.

Jus to test, I restored the BIOS to its default settings (other boot order), and it keeps working.

I do not understand that, but it is enough for the current problem.

Thanks you very much,

Regards,

Pierre Chatelier

Hello,

I can't remember all the details, but here is what I have done

• Triple NativeBoot *

I have made 3 partitions : Leopard, WinXP and Ubuntu (for me in /dev/disk0s3 = /dev/sda3 for linux). So far, Grub is installed with its default config from Ubuntu

I had to install ReFit to be able to select which one to boot at launch

• Migrating GRUB *

With WinXP installation disk, I booted a console to restore the MBR. Thus, after refit boot, Windows did not pass through GRUB any more to boot. But Ubuntu could not boot any more.

With a Live CD, I booted an Ubuntu, mounted my disk partitions, and reinstalled grub, but directly in /dev/sda3/boot (undesrtand X/boot, where X is a mount point for /dev/sda3). See (grub-install --root-directory=X)

Now, after Refit, only Linux is passing trough GRUB

• Creating virtual machines *

With vmware-rawdiskcreator, I created vmdk files for Ubuntu; and with the VMWareFusion 2.0 assistant, I created a virtual machine based on those files.

WinXP is automatically detected as BootCamp partition, nothing to do there.

• Booting Ubuntu in VMWare *

The main reson for the current thread is that that point was not working.

At the UbuntuVM boot, hit F2 to enter the BIOS, play a little with boot devices, save&quit, and it should work... it did for me, even if I potentially did nothing else than entering/quitting the BIOS.

Regards,

Pierre Chateier