Hi,
I already posted the following topic to the "VirtualBox on Linux Hosts" Forum on September 8th. No answer so far, so I try here... sorry for the duplicate.
I installed VirtualBox 3.1.6 on Ubuntu 10.04 on a Lenovo ThinkPad W510. I want VB to run the Windows XP image already installed on /dev/sda1 without accessing any other partition. Hence, following the instructions at "http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#rawdisk" I:
0- added my userid to group "disk" since /dev/sda* belong to root:disk
1- created a VMDK in ~/.VirtualBox issueing "VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename $PWD/IBMwinXP.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1 -relative" (with no error or warning message)
2- created a VM using VirtualBox OSE
3- registered the VMDK with the Virtual Media Manager
4- defined the VMDK as HD to the VM.
So far so good? Not quite: at this point the virtual size of the disk printed by VB OSE is 465.76GB, the WHOLE HD, non just partition /dev/sda1 as I expected using the "-relative" option. In order to check this finding, I booted Trinity Rescue Kit 3.4 from the CD Device. Infact, running "fdisk /dev/sda" shows ALL of the partitions of the physical disk. Any hint on what's wrong with my approach? Any alternative to get the same result?
Thanks in advance for any help,
Francesco