Playing with many differant distros of Linux, BSD's, Solaris all on VMware, question about virtual CD drive software.

[coolred]

I know there are many programs out there that create a virtual CD drive. Thus you can have a CD's ISO image on your hard drive and it can be read as though it was on a CD in your CD drive. I was wondering if it was possible to get one of these to work with VMware. Since I am trying so many differant OS's I would rather not waste a CD/DVD on each one. It would be nicer to have them on my hard drive where I can easily delete them if needed.

Any help. Whats a good app to choose?

 

[BlueWeasel]

I use QEMUwin to test out ISO's from within Windows without having to burn a CD/DVD.

QEMU for Windows: http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~qemu-win/

I just extracted the QEMU zip file to a folder on my HD and I place the ISO file I want to test in the same folder. Then just run the following from the command line:

START qemu.exe -L . -m 128 -cdrom image.iso -enable-audio -localtime

....where image.iso is the full filename of the ISO image file

 

[agnitrate]

I'm not sure what you're getting at. VMWare lets you select an actual CD-ROM drive to use as the cd-rom in the computer. Your ISO software will create a fake drive, you mount the ISO you want to use, and VMWare believes that's the disk. That's how I do it anyways.

Did I misinterpret your question?

-silver

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Daemon-Tools

- M4H

 

[duragezic]

Yes Daemon Tools will do exactly that.

 

[ttown]

I use daemon tools with vmware workstation 4.5(?) with no problems
just like agnitrate says

 

[coolred]

Originally posted by: agnitrate
I'm not sure what you're getting at. VMWare lets you select an actual CD-ROM drive to use as the cd-rom in the computer. Your ISO software will create a fake drive, you mount the ISO you want to use, and VMWare believes that's the disk. That's how I do it anyways.

Did I misinterpret your question?

-silver

No you understood my question exactly. Although you may have thought I knew more then I did. I knew what these programs where capable of. But I wasn't sure if they worked with VMware. But now that you have cleared that up, I am ready to go, thanks.

 

[manly]

VMware has built-in ISO mounting. Only tricky part is if you need to re-mount on the fly (but it can be done).

 

[coolred]

Originally posted by: manly
VMware has built-in ISO mounting. Only tricky part is if you need to re-mount on the fly (but it can be done).

Yeah I actually just found this, can't believe I missed it before. What do you mean by mount on the fly? I am both a VMware and linux newb.


Just realized you probablly were saying I have to remount the image each time I need to use it. Is that right?

 

[n0cmonkey]

qemu works fine with this stuff. I use it occassionally to play around.

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: coolred

Originally posted by: manly
VMware has built-in ISO mounting. Only tricky part is if you need to re-mount on the fly (but it can be done).

Yeah I actually just found this, can't believe I missed it before. What do you mean by mount on the fly? I am both a VMware and linux newb.


Just realized you probablly were saying I have to remount the image each time I need to use it. Is that right?

No I'm saying you need to remount for different images, i.e. SuSE Linux Pro CDs 1 through 5.