[Xastir] Any Vmware experts out there who can contact me off list?

[Tom Russo]

Please don't answer off list.  I'm very interested in the answer.

On Fri, Mar 23, 2007 at 03:56:46PM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <davidf4 at mindspring.com> flavor, containing:
> I recently had a partial hard drive failure of my XP Pro partition but have
> moved to another drive thanks to a Knoppix cd and the dd command.
> 
> However, since then Vmware never gets past the initial splash screen and
> doesn't show any of the pseudo bios messages.  My guess is that one or more
> of the files that chkdsk had to repair from the NTFS journal didn't get put
> back together right.  Everything else seems to work so it's hard to track
> down.
> 
> Yes, I've uninstalled and reinstalled and even tried an earlier version and
> then upgrading.  No luck.
> 
> Would converting from the simple player to Vmware Server be something I
> might want to try?  I haven't looked at the registration process to see if
> it is yucky or not.

I don't know if server will provide a "repair" option that might recover
your VM's disks.  I do know that the registration process is not yucky --  you
simply have to provide a name and email address and answer a few survey-type
questions about how you intend to use it, and they send you a registration key.

I did go through the process but never actually installed the copy of server
that I downloaded --- I wound up buying Workstation instead as it was more
of a fit for my needs.  As far as I can tell there's no type of disk repair
utility that comes with Workstation, so I rather doubt that there will be
one in Server, but there could be some way to recover it.

If you just happen to have the original zip file for the virtual machine,
you might try moving your current virtual machine file out of the way and
unpacking a new virgin copy, and see if that boots up.  That would at least
tell you if it's your virtual machine that's corrupted or the player.
If it's the VM there might be no way to fix it short of reinstalling it.

BTW, this might be a good time to point out to others who were considering
downloading the virtual machine that I have just put a new version up for
grabs, thanks to Jason Winningham and John Ronan.  This has all the Xubuntu
updates through last Thursday, a CVS version of xastir from the same day,
and xastir built against OpenMotif instead of lesstif.

If you figure out that you have a good vmware player install and a corrupted,
unrecoverable virtual machine and that you have to start from scratch, you
might want to grab the latest VM instead of using the old one.  Links are
on the wiki, as usual.

Also, Scott Miller (of OpenTracker fame) is considering making CDs containing
the virtual machine available for nominal cost from his web site, but this
hasn't happened yet.  

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
"And, isn't sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is
 one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh,
 oooh, the sky is the limit!"  --- The Tick