Hi, all.
Recently I tried to use VMWare Server and got the following problem. Several days of googling and searching this forum did not give a nice solution about this problem.
My system has two hard disk drives: the first one has NTFS partitions for MS Windows XP, and the second one has Linux ext3 partitions for Fedora Core 5 Linux. I installed VMWare Server on the Windows side and tried to access Linux partitions by adding a physical disk.
The problem begins. When I choose the second drive (PhysicalDrive1) and "Use individual partitions", I get the following error:
Failed to retrieve disk partition information for "
.\PhysicalDrive1":
The partition table is invalid.
And then, I could not see any ext3 partitions in the dialog box of partition selection. Actually, the ext3 partitions in the second drive are perfect; they were newly created when I re-installed FC5 just a few hours ago.
\# fdisk -l
...
Disk /dev/hdb: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 13286 106719763+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 13287 13548 2104515 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hdb3 * 13549 14593 8393962+ 83 Linux
\# hdparm /dev/hdb
/dev/hdb:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 16383/255/63, sectors = 234441648, start = 0
I felt that I have no choice except choosing "Use entire disk", but this raised another problem. When I booted the FC5 virtual machine in VMWare Server Console, I could see many drive I/O errors like this:
hda: task_in_intr: status=0x41 \{ DriveReady Error }
hda: task_in_intr: error=0x10 \{ SectorIdNotFound }, LBAsect=234436539, sector=234436539
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
hda: task_in_intr: status=0x41 \{ DriveReady Error }
hda: task_in_intr: error=0x10 \{ SectorIdNotFound }, LBAsect=234436539, sector=234436539
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
hda: task_in_intr: status=0x41 \{ DriveReady Error }
hda: task_in_intr: error=0x10 \{ SectorIdNotFound }, LBAsect=234436539, sector=234436539
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
end_request: I/O error, dev hda, sector 234436539
Then I examined the drive geometry in the virtual machine. "fdisk -l" said the drive has only 14261 cylinders! (14593 is the correct value.) hdparm also reported the number of sectors is only 229113954. (234441648 is the real one.) So the virtual system cannot access sector no. 234436539 and so on.
Finally, I found that the vmdk file has a wrong disk geometry.
\# Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=e6dca5ce
parentCID=ffffffff
createType="fullDevice"
\# Extent description
RW 229113954 FLAT "
.\PhysicalDrive1" 0
\# The Disk Data Base
#DDB
ddb.toolsVersion = "0"
ddb.adapterType = "ide"
ddb.geometry.biosSectors = "63"
ddb.geometry.biosHeads = "255"
ddb.geometry.biosCylinders = "1024"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.geometry.heads = "16"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "16383"
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4"
I tried to edit this file so that it has the correct values, but VMWare refused to use the corrected vmdk file.
How can I fix this problem and access my ext3 partitions safely? I think some other one faced the same problem but no one seems to have a right solution about this.