[fedora-virt] how to boot Windows partition as KVM/Qemu guest

[Bill McGonigle]

On 09/28/2010 06:21 AM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> Another way to do it is very hairy, but might just work:
>
> <disk type='block'>
>    <source dev='/dev/sda'/>
>    <target dev='hda' bus='ide'/>
> </disk>
>
> Of course now virtual Windows will see the host disk, so you'd need to
> be extremely careful not to modify the partition table or the Linux
> host partition from the guest (not to mention security concerns).

Way back when VMWare was still hosted at Cornell, I used to dual-boot 
Linux and Windows2000 this way.  It involved setting up two hardware 
profiles and mucking about in boot.ini for boot profiles, or something 
to that effect.

It actually worked, though.  But that was before all the hardware-change 
activation nonsense too, so I don't know if/how hardware profiles are 
still available and how that would affect activation.  Also, the big 
virus of the day was ILOVEYOU and there weren't any rootkits out 
(Russian mafia or Sony) and proprietary software didn't write to your 
MBR for licensing information (TurboTax).

The best use cases I can imagine for still doing this would also revolve 
around more proprietary software licenses (seeing a pattern here)?  You 
might consider hosting your data on a Samba or iSCSI volume and having 
two Windows installs, but again, this sounds like a licensing problem 
more than anything.

-Bill

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