[fedora-virt] qemu-kvm to guest using physical Windows7 partition (on Fedora16)

[Ademar de Souza Reis Jr.]

On Fri, Jan 06, 2012 at 02:11:44AM +1100, Philip Rhoades wrote:
> Rich,
> 
> 
> On 2012-01-05 21:05, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> >On Thu, Jan 05, 2012 at 10:27:29AM +0200, Dor Laor wrote:
> >>On 01/03/2012 06:42 PM, Ian Pilcher wrote:
> >>>On 01/02/2012 03:38 AM, Emanuel Rietveld wrote:
> >>>>When you give qemu-kvm a partition to use as disk for a guest,
> >>it does
> >>>>exactly that. It uses the partition as a disk for the guest.
> >>So, the
> >>>>guest sees a *disk* while in the physical situation it's a
> >>*partition*.
> >>>>You may be able to do what you want by attaching a whole disk
> >>to the
> >>>>guest, instead of just the partition.
> 
> 
> Not possible in my situation - I want to be able to dual boot OR run
> Windows 7 as a guest using the same partition install.
> 

You can use a small image with grub to boot the windows
partition when running inside qemu. Basically a boot disk
with grub pointing to your real partition as seen from qemu.

I had my win7 partition booting this way under VirtualBox. It was
working perfectly (no hardware issues, win7 is smart enough
regarding auto-detection). *BUT* everytime I switched between the
VM and the real hardware, I had to reactivate my windows license
(which is legal, but cumbersome).

I gave up on trying to fix the license reactivation (my win7 is
for games anyway). But if you manage to mimic your hardware well
enough inside qemu (lots of variables) or trick windows
somehow (legal?), it should work. Please report your steps if you
succeed.

Cheers,
   - Ademar

> 
> >>>I've often thought that it should be possible to cook something
> >>up with
> >>>device manager -- essentially creating a "wrapper" that
> >>provides a MBR,
> >>>etc. around a Windows logical volume or partition.  Might be a fun
> >>>project for someone.
> >>
> >>I'm sure its possible to do that but it may require some hack of
> >>presenting a the original MBR as some type of shadow one for the
> >>guest or other trick. Ric, have you played w/ it?
> >
> >Xen used to synthesize an MBR in the guest.
> >
> >As Ian asked above, it's possible to do this with device-mapper too,
> >although I doubt it's a good idea, but here's how you'd do it anyway:
> >
> >
> >https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/virt/2010-September/002288.html
> >
> >https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/technique-for-synthesizing-a-partition-table-on-a-naked-filesystem/
> 
> 
> So if I understand this correctly - it IS possible to (easily) do
> what I want with Xen but NOT kvm?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Phil.
> -- 
> Philip Rhoades
> 
> GPO Box 3411
> Sydney NSW	2001
> Australia
> E-mail:  phil at pricom.com.au
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-- 
Ademar de Souza Reis Jr.
Red Hat

^[:wq!