Fedora 8 on Windows XP SP2 host

jcag · Post by **jcag** » 3. Mar 2008, 21:06

Hi,

I installed last version of Virtualbox on Win Xp SP2 and create a fixed virtual disk of 20 GB.
I created a new virtual machine to install Fedora 8 and when I ran this machine to install Fedora 8 i got the message "Partitions table of peripheral sda unreadable" and the installation aborted.

What can I do ?
Thanks in advance.

jcag

smjork · Post by **smjork** » 14. Mar 2008, 08:56

I suggest u rebuild that virtual machine using a dinamic HDD instead of a fixed size. I myself run a Fedora 8 virtual machine on an XP-SP2 host and it works absolutely fine. I let Fedora do the partitioning of the drive since I only use that machine for tests. I also installed Fedora 7, Ubuntu and Mandriva in the same way. None of them generated such partitioning problem.
On the other hand I never partitioned the virtual disks manually. But I don't think that would be a big fuss ...

jcag · Post by **jcag** » 18. Mar 2008, 21:43

Thank you for your answer. All is right now, but i cannot configure my graphic card. I chosen the NV driver for my Asus 8600GT but I get a message like "Xserver failed (graphic interface) No devices detected". I'm a newbie in Linux, what can I do ?

Post by **Sasquatch** » 18. Mar 2008, 21:54

Your physical graphics card isn't visible in the virtual machine. There is one emulated to do the job. Best option is to use the 'vesa' driver. After you install the guest additions, you might be able to use the correct driver. Do an lspci to check what videocard is emulated and read the manual too. There is a lot of info about this in it.

smjork · Post by **smjork** » 22. Mar 2008, 12:26

The virtual machines have their own "hardware" devices. Sometimes these virtual-devices are linked to physical ones (Floppy, CD-ROM, etc) But the video card is always an "independent" device inside the virtual machine.
And it's capabilities are reduced, meaning you will never have a comparison between such a virtual-video-card and some fancy NVidia or ATI Radeon real video cards. The only thing you can do to improve your video of the virtual machine is to make sure you install the VBox Additions. That will provide you enhanced video drivers for the virtual-video-card, no matter what type of OS you have on the virtual machine. As long as the OS is supported in VM, of course.

So, for example, you won't be able to run, let's say, a full Compiz/Beryl desktop inside a Linux virtual machine. Or a very fancy 3D app/game on a Windows virtual machine. There are limits and you need to be aware of them.