[OFFTOPIC]Now I have a question to you:
I'm in the end phase of my VMWare.Script, which installs WS 5.x to the PE.
I want to test in a VM, rather on every change to burn a new CD.
You anwhere wrote, which changes are to applied to VMWare in order to run in a VM
Because I do not remember where, can you repead here?
[/OFFTOPIC]
Peter
Peter - thanks again for your patience and teaching.
It is much appreciated.
Hey - this is not offtopic at all - my first intention is to see how VMware runs on top of winbuilder.
If you are already looking into it - thats fine with me.
Peter - do you use Workstation 5 or Workstation 6 for testing ?
In WS 6 this is much easier.
Just open the vmx-file of the test-VM and add this line:
monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = "TRUE"
This closes the backdoor channel that VMware uses to communicate with guests via the vmware-tools.
If you launch vmware.exe in a VM configured with this parameter - it will not detect that it is running inside a VM.
Normally a VM started inside a VM will just pop up a message saying:
With the mentioned cheat the VM should start.
For testing purpose you can assume that a build that is able to start inside a VM is good enough to be tested with a real CD.
Testing more functions than just the startabilty inside a VM is a matter of your host hardware.
If you have a modern box which allows Intel VT or AMD pacifica to be anabled in the BIOS you can also test other functions.
You have to add this for Intel VT:
monitor_control.vt32 = "true"
and this for AMD pacifica:
monitor_control.enable_extended_svm = "true"
When you have an older box - or if you do not set this parameters you just can test if you can start a VM at all.
VMs will be so slow that you have to wait several hours to see the BIOS - in short: unusable.
With Workstation 5 this two parameters are non-functional - so the best you can get is just the test if it starts at all.
You can also test inside Virtual Box or Qemu - but very likely those VMs will crash soon after you start a Workstation.
Latest Virtual Box also allows to set the Intel VT/AMD pacifica switch - set this - maybe you can run a VM this way.
Anyway - for really intensive testing of network functions and so on - you either need Workstation 6 with VT/Pacifica or a real box.
By the way - the switch
monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = "TRUE"
you can also bypass the test Check-if-inside-VM of the installer.
Before Workstation 6 I used to do that with an edit of the workstation*.msi which has a line like
CheckVM that can be removed with Orca.
Peter - just curious:
You may have noticed one problem.
VMware Workstation either needs to run the vmauthd-service or it needs to
have a "__vmware__ " group and a "__vmware_user__" user established in the SAM-hive.
As the vmauthd-service needs a lot of resources and is rather picky when running I do not install this service at all.
Instead I patch the registry after boot with a patch like thisREGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SAM\SAM\Domains\Account\Aliases\Names\__vmware__] @=hex(3e8): [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SAM\SAM\Domains\Account\Users\Names\__vmware_user__] @=hex(3e9): [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SECURITY\SAM\Domains\Account\Users\Names\__vmware_user__] @=hex(3e9):
You do not need to try to apply this patch at build-time as PE will not come up with a patched SAM.
By the way - I use a much larger SAM-patch but cdob at 911 found out that this small one does the job.
Didn't test it myself though.
Sometime ago Frodo made a plugin for Workstation 5 which didn't use a patch like this and instead used the vmauthd-service.
This performance of a setup like this really sucks - better use the patch-sam approach.
Do you plan to use the virtual networks too ?
I found a way to bring them up at boot with using a penetcfg-profile.
If you need help - let me know.
Ulli
The above have been "splitted" from original topic:
http://www.boot-land...?...70&start=70
following a request by psc, as to keep this interesting topic alive and separate from the original.
jaclaz