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vmware and linux
- 01-26-2006
January 26, 2006, 4:09 am

HI,
I want to learn about device drivers on linux. If I install a vmware player
and a image of linux on it . I don't loose my windows notebook and have all
the advantages of linux and if I screw up the file systems I can then take
and just reinstall. By copying a few files.
Does anyone else use vmware the same way I am describing?
I want to learn about device drivers on linux. If I install a vmware player
and a image of linux on it . I don't loose my windows notebook and have all
the advantages of linux and if I screw up the file systems I can then take
and just reinstall. By copying a few files.
Does anyone else use vmware the same way I am describing?

Re: vmware and linux

The "trouble" with that is that you can't then access any real devices
because they're all inaccessable behind VMware's virtual machine interface.
However, you can probably access the standard devices, like the serial
port and parallel port, but at the VMware interfaces they're just
software interfaces through the host OS's driver layer that look like
hardware devices inside the VM, so they'll behave differently in
terms of timing and the like, I guess.
The advantage is that you can take snapshots of the VM at any time and
recover it instantly if you break it.
Having said that, I don't know if you can take snapshots with VM player.
You certainly can with the full VMware workstation. You also can't
create VMs with VMware player altough you can probably install onto a
created, but empty, VM.
I've used VMware extensively with a windows guest on a Linux host, and
less extensively with a Linux guest on a Windows host. Both work
very well, but I've only used them at the application level of the
guest OS rather than the device driver level. I've no reason to
expect that there is anything fundamentally difficult with doing that,
though, given the above caveat about hardware access.
--
Nobby
Nobby

Re: vmware and linux

Errr ...
The "trouble" with that is that you can't then access any real devices
because they're all inaccessable behind VMware's virtual machine
interface.
However, you can probably access the standard devices, like the serial
port and parallel port, but at the VMware interfaces they're just
software interfaces through the host OS's driver layer that look like
hardware devices inside the VM, so they'll behave differently in
terms of timing and the like, I guess.
The advantage is that you can take snapshots of the VM at any time and
recover it instantly if you break it.
Having said that, I don't know if you can take snapshots with VM player.
You certainly can with the full VMware workstation. You also can't
create VMs with VMware player altough you can probably install onto a
created, but empty, VM.
I've used VMware extensively with a windows guest on a Linux host, and
less extensively with a Linux guest on a Windows host. Both work
very well, but I've only used them at the application level of the
guest OS rather than the device driver level. I've no reason to
expect that there is anything fundamentally difficult with doing that,
though, given the above caveat about hardware access.

--
Nobby
Nobby

Re: vmware and linux
I am not sure if it is possible to work at the driver level with any
emulator/simulator. The real behaviour and particularly the real-time
events are definitely different with real devices directly interacting
with the OS.
The approach of going for VMware sounds good only for application
development, but if you have to deal with real interrupts and real time
data then it dorn't seem to make any sense
emulator/simulator. The real behaviour and particularly the real-time
events are definitely different with real devices directly interacting
with the OS.
The approach of going for VMware sounds good only for application
development, but if you have to deal with real interrupts and real time
data then it dorn't seem to make any sense
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