Ademar,
On 2012-01-10 08:46, Ademar de Souza Reis Jr. wrote:
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.
I have been surviving quite happily without Windows for many years now
but recently I have HAD to use it for only a couple of programs and I
resent having to reboot for sometimes only 5mins a day - it would be
excellent if I could get at the Win7 partition via a virtual arrangement
but still have the dual boot option working OK if I need it . . the
reactivation nonsense pisses me off . .
Thanks to all who posted! - it was much appreciated.
Regards,
Phil.
--
Philip Rhoades
GPO Box 3411
Sydney NSW 2001
Australia
E-mail: phil(a)pricom.com.au