Installing PROGRAMS in a virtual machine

[IbChristian]

I got Virtual Manager running, Windows XP is loaded and working fine, but I cannot find how to install a Windows dedicated program into my virtual Windows OS. Anyone know of a good tutorial or walk-through for doing`this?

The program is on a DVD-ROM, and while the computer has a drive, when I click on the DVD in the Windows file manager it brings up the .iso file for WinXP that I used to create the VM. Is there a way to get the VM to recognize the computer's physical DVD drive? I have copied the program files to a directory on my computer if not, but when I configured the Virtual Manager to share files, it will no longer initiate the virtual Windows.

 

[dos2unix]

You do it in a VM, exactly the same way you would do it if it wasn't a VM.
But XP is pretty old, I doubt you'll find many apps that run under it now.

 

[NicWelds]

You'll have to point the virtual DVD drive of your virtual machine to your computer's physical DVD drive instead of the .iso file. Or make an .iso image of your DVD and put that in the virtual drive. My laptop doesn't have a DVD drive so I always went with the second option.

 

[IbChristian]

You'll have to point the virtual DVD drive of your virtual machine to your computer's physical DVD drive instead of the .iso file. Or make an .iso image of your DVD and put that in the virtual drive. My laptop doesn't have a DVD drive so I always went with the second option.

How do you do that?

 

[deb_user]

You do it in the VM manager settings. It's not difficult with KVM/QEMU/virt-manager, but I don't know about VirtualBox, because I don't use it.

 

[NicWelds]

How do you do that?

In your virtual hardware details:
Find the CD/DVD drive
In "source path" add your drive. In my case it is /dev/sr0
If you're not sure what the path to your drive is you can use:

lsblk

It should be in that list

Once you hit apply, the virtual machine should see the CD/DVD.

After that, the installation should just work like a regular CD/DVD installation.

 

[IbChristian]

OK, I typed lsblk into the Terminal and got this:

chris:~$ lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda 8:0 0 119.2G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 1M 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 513M 0 part /boot/efi
└─sda3 8:3 0 118.7G 0 part /
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom

...which is Greek to me, May I assume that the sda's are the drives (real and virtual)? Right now the "disk" listed in the IDE CDROM 1 source path is the .iso file that runs the virtual machine. I'm worried if I change that the VM will not fire up the virtual Windows which is what happened before.

 

[NicWelds]

OK, I typed lsblk into the Terminal and got this:

...which is Greek to me, May I assume that the sda's are the drives (real and virtual)? Right now the "disk" listed in the IDE CDROM 1 source path is the .iso file that runs the virtual machine. I'm worried if I change that the VM will not fire up the virtual Windows which is what happened before.

Yes, sda is your hard drive.
The CD/DVD drive is:

sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom

So the path you would use would be the same as the one I used. /dev/sr0

The virtual machine shouldn't need the install CD.iso to run. If you really don't want to change the current CD drive you can always add another one.

 

[IbChristian]

Tried the code as written in your last post, got an error message. Tried "/dev/sr0" and got "No Media Detected(/dev/sr0)"

This is what bugs me most about Linux - Things work great in the instructions, just not in the real world. At least this time when I changed the IDE CDROM1 the virtual Windows still openned. So I'm partway there, I guess.

 

[NicWelds]

Tried the code as written in your last post, got an error message. Tried "/dev/sr0" and got "No Media Detected(/dev/sr0)"

This is what bugs me most about Linux - Things work great in the instructions, just not in the real world. At least this time when I changed the IDE CDROM1 the virtual Windows still openned. So I'm partway there, I guess.

Getting a bit closer I suppose.

With the drive pointed to /dev/sr0, if you just apply it as is and then go into your VM. What happens when you put a CD into it?

 

[IbChristian]

My virtual Windows did communicate with the DVD-RW drive! Unfortunately, when I tried to run setup for the program I got an incomptability merssage. So I guess I have to make a new VM with a different version of Windows. I KNOW Win 7 will run it, it's already doing so on my desktop.

I guess I could buy one, there are genuine disks available online with the product key included. And it would be a good idea to have a spare...

 

[NicWelds]

It's worth a try. Sometimes troubleshooting is more like using brute force to try all the different options and combinations than a precise science.

 

[IbChristian]

It will open the DVD-Rw drive, show what files are on the disk, but cannot open them; it keeps saying they're not valid windows applications. Not even .txt files So the Virtual Windows 7 machine is still not really "talking" to my real machine.

 

[KGIII]

It will open the DVD-Rw drive, show what files are on the disk, but cannot open them; it keeps saying they're not valid windows applications. Not even .txt files So the Virtual Windows 7 machine is still not really "talking" to my real machine.

I have a crazy idea. What if you took the DVDs and wrote them into an .iso file and then mounted that as an .iso in your virtual manager?

I'm mostly familiar with VirtualBox, so I'm not sure how you'd go about doing so. It's likely possible. I'm just not sure which buttons you should pretty easy to do so.

I've tried many of the virtualization options out there. Out of all of them, I prefer VirtualBox. After that, I prefer VMWare.

The former is open source. The latter is partially open source, while also having free options for personal use. They sold fairly recently, and Broadcom (the new owners) has made it difficult to find downloads, but they're still available.

If you want to try VirtualBox, that's easy. It's probably in your default repos, but the site gives clear directions.

But now things have changed for VMWare Workstation Pro. You can get it for free, but you have to jump through some hoops to do so. Those hoops are too long to mention here, but require you to have an account, give them some form of mailing address, and make sure you pick the open source version.

If you have issues with that, send me a PM. I'll get you sorted.

 

[IbChristian]

It's possible to create an .iso file for an App/program? I thought that was only for operating systems. Would I use something like Rufus or Balena? I have all the files from the installation disk copied into a directory in Linux.

Actually, I've tried V.B. but got the same results: not compatible.

 

[NicWelds]

It's possible to create an .iso file for an App/program? I thought that was only for operating systems. Would I use something like Rufus or Balena? I have all the files from the installation disk copied into a directory in Linux.

Actually, I've tried V.B. but got the same results: not compatible.

You can make an iso image of any optical disk like CDs and DVDs. I usually use the following to make .iso images:

 cat /dev/sr0 > /path/to/file/name.iso

There are other ways to make disk images but that one has always worked for me.

I mostly use my virtual machine to run old games and I've always just ran them with disk images. It puts less wear on the CDs that way.

 

[IbChristian]

OK, but we are not talking about a single file here. The program has dozens of folders and files within it.

 

[IbChristian]

Crazy question here, I recently replaced the HDD drive on my desktop with an SSD. It works fine, it was just getting old so my computer guy suggested replacement.

I still have it, it has Windows 7 installed along with the needed program, all good to go. I have heard there are devices which will allow me to connect a hard drive to my computer and run the PC from it as a form of dual boot. Would that work? And if so, where can I find out how to do it?

 

[NicWelds]

OK, but we are not talking about a single file here. The program has dozens of folders and files within it.

A disk image is a digital copy of an optical disk.

Optical disc image - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Everything in the CD, filesystem and all is copied as stored on the CD. Once done the .iso file can be mounted and read just like a CD.

You would use the iso to install the program.

Crazy question here, I recently replaced the HDD drive on my desktop with an SSD. It works fine, it was just getting old so my computer guy suggested replacement.

I still have it, it has Windows 7 installed along with the needed program, all good to go. I have heard there are devices which will allow me to connect a hard drive to my computer and run the PC from it as a form of dual boot. Would that work? And if so, where can I find out how to do it?

I'm not sure exactly how that works. Last time I checked, Windows had dropped their support for portable installations so one would have to use a third party too
to make a portable installation. I don't know if you can convert an existing installation to a portable one. I have a USB to SATA for accessing hard drives that have been removed from other computers. I ran Arch linux through that for a several months so it does work, at least for Linux.

 

[IbChristian]

I'm not sure exactly how that works. Last time I checked, Windows had dropped their support for portable installations so one would have to use a third party too
to make a portable installation. I don't know if you can convert an existing installation to a portable one. I have a USB to SATA for accessing hard drives that have been removed from other computers. I ran Arch linux through that for a several months so it does work, at least for Linux.

I think that may actually be my best option. I would have Windows 7, the Topo program, any other programs I use in conjunction with it and the printer drivers already installed and ready to go. Also I could use this on any of my computers that has a USB-A port. Just plug it in and boot from it when I need it.

Anybody recommend a good adapter or HDD case? The HDD is a Seagate Barracuda 1,000GB hard disk drive (SATA connect), 5VDC-0.75A / 12VDC-0.75A and measures 5.75" x 4" x 0.75" (146mm x 102mm x 19mm).