Does the virtual machine use the host's SATA drivers?

ToddAndMargo · Post by **ToddAndMargo** » 21. Jul 2008, 06:25

Hi All,

I am in the unfortunate situation, until I get a new non-plextor SATA
DVD burner, where if I burn a DVD, I risk destroying my (CentOS 5.2)
file system a third time.

I was wondering, if I run the Cent 5.2 Live CD in a virtual machine,
and cut a DVD with K3B/growisofs, would the virtual machine be using
the same SATA kernel drivers as my host (risking another file system
crash)? If the Live CD's virtual machine corrupts, I really don't care.
It is a CD-ROM.

But, if I have to go through a third rebuild of the host ...

Many thanks,
--T

Post by **TerryE** » 22. Jul 2008, 00:29

Tod, I am a little confused here. Are you trying to backup your CentOS 5.2 Host System or a guest VM?

If you want to backup your Host file system don't get VMs involved. The whole idea of a VM is that it is a protected sandpit that can't access the hosts F/S in an unprotected manner. Trying to do so will at best fail and at worst (if you use raw VMDK imaging) trash your hosts File System.

The best thing to do is to use a LiveCD to backup your root partition to a recovery image on a reserved recovery partition (which can later spool off to DVD) or buy one of those cheap NAS drives and do it over the Network.

ToddAndMargo · Post by **ToddAndMargo** » 22. Jul 2008, 00:40

TerryE wrote: If you want to backup your Host file system don't get VMs involved. The whole idea of a VM is that it is a protected sandpit that can't access the hosts F/S in an unprotected manner. Trying to do so will at best fail and at worst (if you use raw VMDK imaging) trash your hosts File System

Yep. That was what I was trying to do. As writing a backup DVD from my
host is trashing my host's file system (kernel panic), I was looking for
a workaround to write a subdirectory to my DVD. But, if there
is any change that a VM will also trash my hosts file system,
then absolutely not. Thank you for the warning!

-T