Gnome Failed for me

[Obeechi]

Per Pat Lee, I was in Gnome and was going to resize the partition to fit the new disk size.. and it failed... so now what?... does this mean I have to do a fresh install?

I'm talking Gparted... and it failed at Check file system for errors...

I used the first listed auto-configuration... what's this macbook option?...

[Obeechi]

Well, finally got the gparted to work... had to expand the single partition to fill the expanded virtual disk... think it was a matter of running diskeeper again with a boot defrag and chck disk from within diskeeper and also within computer management snap in, double selected, that is for both options... and the expansion part worked, but now, with the reboot into vista I've got a message that I've got to install the disk to repair the installation of vista

0xc0000225

Thats not supposed to happen is it...

And now the disk is in the drive.. and I can't get the guest to boot off of the disk, and I've gone into the bios and removable devices is at the top of the list..

Edit: Gee this kind of tricky... I have to shut down (not restart) the guest, then go to disk utility and unmount the installation disk from osx, or the mac desktop, and then start the guest and immediately click within the guest, and then 'hit any key' - finally got to the repair area... (and along the way rebooted osx.. )

Hearing a lot noise from the hard drive...

During boot up is says something like safe ir not found, skipping auto check.... and goes into vista

ssiefr.ex -- that was more like it..

Forgot to mention that a 10 second boot gives you a little more time to react (VMX Extras), and I had to move the CD Rom up to the top of the boot order to get it to boot off the installation disk... when removable devices was at the top.. .it just wouldn't happen...

I now have removable devices, then hard drive, then cd-rom.. I hope thats the original order...

With respect to the ssiefr.ex message,

http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/68169-ssiefr-ex-program-not-found-skipping-autocheck.html

I do have both webroot and diskeeper 2007... So now what... that error message wasn't there before going through this gparted stuff... (actually I paid for diskeeper last night, where previously I was using a trial version, and this was done prior to the use of gparted.. and didn't see it when booting up last night prior to using gparted)

Think when office for mac comes out in binary, might get it and quickbooks for mac, and just use windows a whole lot less... its just too time consuming, and interfers with actually working...

The results of using diskeeper in the virtual disk versus the boot camp partition arent the same, there are more pink or lower performing system files in the virtual disk, and the file structure ends up more continuous in boot camp... my virtual disk is now 20GB and boot camp partition is 46GB

Well even with this newer larger size for the virtual disk, it still fails to defrag using vdiskmanager GUI,

Using log file /var/tmp//vmware-markcox/vdiskmanager.log

Failed to defragment: There is not enough space on the file system for the selected operation (14).

And I move all my mac aps to an external drive, and eliminated about all of my vista aps... so this really sucks... I guess I'll have to try it again running from an external drive...

So I guess the solution is to move the virtual disk to an external hard drive partition, and increase it to 100GB, and change it to a preallocated disk... but keep my data hopefully saved to the internal drive.. so it can be used by boot camp and the vm.. and for that reason.. I wish that I could have another partition within my internal drive that was in NTFS and only for data.... is there a way to that with boot camp?...

[RDPetruska]

>Failed to defragment: There is not enough space on the file system for the selected operation (14).

1. What type of virtual disk is it? Monolithic or 2GB-Split?

If it's monolithic, then you need as much free space on your host drive as the max. defined size of the virtual disk. If 2GB-Split, then you only need a touch more than 2 GB free.

>So I guess the solution is to move the virtual disk to an external hard drive partition, and increase it to 100GB

Only if you have that much space available... see above.

[Obeechi]

Oh gee, really... so if my virtual disk is 20GB, then I would need 20GB of free space... thats insane... seems like maybe 2GB should then be the default... I never really understood this whole 2Gb split... thought it was just something like bell bottoms or something... groovy

Guess I better split

Edit: Can I do this 2GB split as an overwrite to the existing virtual disk (using vdiskmanager GUI)? -- I did the split... but wrote it to the external drive connected by firewire... so... is there a way to boot from this newly created 2gb split drive...

[RDPetruska]

When you convert the disk, you create a new one. Your VM still points to the old disk until you tell it otherwise. You need to edit the settings of your VM, remove the existing disk, then add the newly converted one. After you power the guest on and verify everything is working, you can safely delete the old disk.

[Obeechi]

Well, I went into vdiskmanager GUI and went into its Convert tab... and there is an Input choice and an Output choice, and I made the Output choice to be my external firewire drive, since there isn't room on the internal disk... and I don't know that I can overwrite the existing virtual disk during this conversion process...

Now that its created I don't see where I can switch the virtual machine over in its settings... I did go into Virtual Machine Library / Settings... and clicked on the Plus Sign.. but hard drives are grayed out...

[admin]

Unfortunately there's no UI to add an existing disk (i.e. your newly converted disk) to an existing virtual machine. You'll need to edit the vmx file directly.

An easier method may be to create a new VM and tell the new virtual machine assistant to use the converted disk.

Also, you can only add new hard disks to a shut down (not suspended or running) machine.

[vinayv]

We haven't exposed the UI for that yet. You will have to manually edit the vmx file. All this means is you need to find the .vmx file in the .vmwarevm bundle, and open it up in something like TextMate, (something that won't mess up line endings). You'll see a line with something.vmdk as the value. This is the line that points to the hard disk. Simply change the value to point (absolute path or relative path from the vmx) the other vmdk.

[Obeechi]

Well, then, what exactly is your Convert tab meant for, what I mean is, could you take the source or input and let it become the same as the output, I mean let it overwrite the existing disk (so it would of course have the same name)... would that work?

[Obeechi]

TextMate?.. what about TextEdit - will that work? (never heard of TextMate, sounds British...)

[admin]

Well, then, what exactly is your Convert tab meant

for, what I mean is, could you take the source or

input and let it become the same as the output, I

mean let it overwrite the existing disk (so it would

of course have the same name)... would that work?

I think that if you do that, vmware-vdiskmanager will complain about the source and destination being the same. The convert tab is meant to switch between monolithic (one huge file) <-> split (lots of 2GB chunks) and preallocated (use up all space initially, helps with fragmentation)/sparse (growable, saves space until needed).

[Obeechi]

If you create a new VM (so you can tell it to use the converted disk), don't you have to also activate vista (and reinstall it..) (sorry, I forget... ).. or is Vista and its activation within the converted disk?

[Obeechi]

Okay, finally starting to understand...

Just used vdiskmanger GUI to convert a monolithic virtual disk into a 2GB Split virtual disk... Had to create the new disk (the output) in an external drive. Since the external drive is a different location, I used the same name for the Virtual Disk. Then created a folder and moved these split files into the folder named 2GB Split. Next, copied the original virtual disk to another, newly created folder, on the external drive, named Monolithic. Placed both these folders inside yet another folder named Virtual Disks. Next going to delete the Monolithic from the internal drive, and then copy the 2GB Split virtual disk to the internal drive. Then going to left click on the vmx file and open it with TextEdit, and perform a Find for .vmdk.. well actually that won't be necessary, since, in this case, the newer disk has the same name...

So now I should be able to defrag, and shrink (is shinking also a type of defragging?... )

BTW, since a growable disk doesn't use of all of the space right off the bat, am I right to assume that its no big deal if you set the vdisk size to 1/2 the total size of the mac hard drive.. or partition...

WAIT, ... was I supposed to shut down, as opposed to suspend, the vm before splitting the virtual disk?

[Jimbode]

Shrink: If you write a large file to the virtual disk, a growable disk increases in size. If you then delete that large file, the growable disk does not \*shrink* back to the size it was...

[Obeechi]

Okay, but where in the sequence of diskeeper, vdisk manager, and iDefrag do you shrink?

AND... will a growable virtual disk wander into your external drives.. in its quest to expand?...

[Jimbode]

I would personally do Diskeeper, then Shrink, then iDefrag after I'd shut down the vm (if doing a live iDefrag. Normally I boot from the iDefrag CD)

[RDPetruska]

>WAIT, ... was I supposed to shut down, as opposed to suspend, the vm before splitting the virtual disk?

ABSOLUTELY! NEVER perform any maintenance operations on a virtual disk on a guest which is suspended!

[Obeechi]

What about vdiskmanager defrag, would you do that after or before the shrink, or would you shrink twice, once after diskeeper, and a second time after vdiskmanager defrag?

[Obeechi]

The odd thing is that you can only shrink when the guest is running ---

Well just noticed, that during the shrink my guest shut itself down... is this normal?... and can't open the vm, and have no idea how far along I am in this process...

[RDPetruska]

Shrink and defrag inside the guest will need to run while the guest is running. I was referring to using the vmware-vdiskmanager utility on a virtual disk.