Direct access to PhysicalDrive0 fails under Windows 2000 (W2K)

[Jurasix]

Dear all,

recently I have encountered the following problem with VMware-Player:

I installed VMware-Player (2.5.1 build-126130) on the Windows 2000 machine as host. Then I created the Virtual-Machine with Linux-Debian as guest OS. I configured this VM so that there should be a direct access to the physical drive of the host system, this I need in order to test my application.

The corresponding parts of the VMX- and VMDK-file looks like following:

VMX:

ide1:0.present = "TRUE"

ide1:0.fileName = "test.vmdk"

ide1:0.deviceType = "rawDisk"

ide1:0.redo = ""

VMDK:

#Disk DescriptorFile

version=1

CID=4a06a25d

parentCID=ffffffff

createType="fullDevice"

#Extent description

RW 781417665 FLAT "
.\PhysicalDrive0" 0

#The Disk Data Base

#DDB

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "7"

ddb.geometry.cylinders = "16383"

ddb.geometry.heads = "16"

ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"

ddb.adapterType = "ide"

ddb.encoding = "windows-1252"

ddb.toolsVersion = "0"

After starting the VM, I get an error message and following debug information in the log-file:

DISK: OPEN ide1:0 'C:\Programme\Myapplication\VDI\Auto\test.vmdk' persistent R[]

DISKLIB-DEVCRW: Facts for
.\PhysicalDrive0: Cap=16992864 Phys C/H/S=16383/16/63 BIOS C/H/S=1024/255/63 Adap=IDE

DISKLIB-DSCPTR: Opened : "
.\PhysicalDrive0" 0 (0xa)

DISKLIB-LINK : Opened 'C:\Programme\Myapplication\VDI\Auto\test.vmdk' (0xa): fullDevice, 16980705 sectors / 8.1 GB.

DISKLIB-LIB : Opened "C:\Programme\Myapplication\VDI\Auto\test.vmdk" (flags 0xa).

DiskGetGeometry: Reading of disk partition table

FILE: File_FullPath: _wfullpath failed on (
.\PhysicalDrive0): 0

AIOMGR: '
.\PhysicalDrive0': Failed to get volume sector size: Unknown error 0 (0x0) (0).

AIOWIN32C: Failed to Queue cmd: Disk sector size check failed (6).

FILE: File_FullPath: _wfullpath failed on (
.\PhysicalDrive0): 87

VMXAIOMGR: Retry on read "
.\PhysicalDrive0" : Disk sector size check failed.

VMXAIOMGR: fileio : err=6 errCode=0 freeSpace=-1

VMXAIOMGR: "
.\PhysicalDrive0" : read s=0 n=4096 ne=1

VMXAIOMGR: v[0]=2843000:4096

Who knows the reason for this error? Obviously there is a problem in the estimation of the sector size.

The same VM with the same configuration works however without any problem under Win2003 and WinXP.

Is there a possibility for some sort of work around?

Sincerely,

Jurasix

[continuum]

How did you create the descriptorfile ?

Looks like it doesn't fit the actual drive you have

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[Jurasix]

Thanks for reply.

Yes, that was also ny first guess.

First I created the descriptor file with a help of WMware-Workstation (v. 6.5.1).

The created descriptor file had another geometry:

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "7"

ddb.geometry.cylinders = "1057"

ddb.geometry.heads = "255"

ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"

ddb.adapterType = "ide"

ddb.encoding = "windows-1252"

ddb.toolsVersion = "0"

In this case I have got exactly the same error as I described before.

From the log file I saw, that VMware-Player recognizes this disk with other geometry:

"Facts for
.\PhysicalDrive0: Cap=16992864 Phys C/H/S=16383/16/63 BIOS C/H/S=1024/255/63 Adap=IDE"

I have changed the geometry in descriptor file to the same as visible geometry for VMware-Player:

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "7"

ddb.geometry.cylinders = "16383"

ddb.geometry.heads = "16"

ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"

ddb.adapterType = "ide"

ddb.encoding = "windows-1252"

ddb.toolsVersion = "0"

But to no effect. The error message remains the same.

The next try I have done, was the other hard disk with completely other geometry.

I have noticed exactly the same error behavior as before.

Interesting in this context is, that under Win2003 and WinXP there are no problem with both versions of file-descriptor and the same vmx-file.