Member Avatar for Big_Daddy

I'm having some trouble installing RH 9.0 using Vmware 4.0 on my laptop. I currently have my hdd partitioned into C and D drive (factory settings). I've decided to install RH 9.0 using vmaware 4.0 and RH's installation wizard is prompting me to partition. It's telling me that everything will be erased on the drive. What do I do? I have valuable software on both my C and D drives. Please help.

Chris

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The installer message "no devices were found" (as reported by ) means the Red Hat installer does not see any block device to receive partitions. and were right that the virtual machine must have a virtual disk attached — the missing piece in this thread is the concrete sequence to verify and fix the VM hardware and to check what the guest kernel actually detected.

Before starting the RH installer: power off the VM, open the VM settings and confirm a Hard Disk device exists and is marked "Connected" (or "Connect at power on"). If no disk is present, add one and pick a sensible size. For very old installers (Red Hat 9 era) prefer an IDE virtual disk or an explicitly compatible SCSI type — older kernels sometimes need specific SCSI drivers and refusing SCSI can produce the "no devices" error. Also verify the installer ISO is attached to the virtual CD and the VM is set to boot it.

When the installer runs, check whether the kernel sees any disks by switching to a shell/console (installer console, e.g., Alt+F2) and running:

cat /proc/partitions
dmesg | egrep -i 'sd|hd|sda|sda'
/sbin/fdisk -l

If these show nothing like /dev/hd or /dev/sd, the guest truly has no attached block device and the VM settings need correction (re-add or change disk type). If a /dev device exists but the partitioner still refuses it, try creating partitions manually with fdisk and then continue the installer.

A few closing notes grounded in this thread: VMware Player (older builds) may not let you create full VMs — use VMware Workstation or VirtualBox for full VM creation (as and discussed). Red Hat 9 is long out of support; for general use prefer a maintained distro (Fedora or a RHEL-compatible rebuild) unless running RH9 is required for legacy reasons. Always snapshot or back up the VM files before changing virtual hardware.

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Member Avatar for Dani

VMware is a program which emulates a virtual computer. The hard drive, etc. in a virtual machine don't really exist physically ... the entire virtual hard drive is really just a bunch of files on your actual hard drive.

That means that if you create a virtual machine with a virtual hard drive, you can format that virtual hard drive, partition that virtual hard drive, do whatever you want to it. It's really just a bunch of files on your actual computer!

That's the beauty of VMware! You're working with a virtual computer that doesn't really exist :) So if you screw anything up, all that is screwed up is a bunch of VM files on your hdd!

Member Avatar for Big_Daddy

Upon further investigation, I now noticed that the error is saying that :?: no devices were found on which to place the file systems. Help :?:

Member Avatar for Dani

When you set up your virtual machine, you must specify exactly how you want the virtual hard drive to be created. In other words, you have to allocate space for it. To do this, shut off the virtual machine, and edit it's configuration settings. This seems more like a VMWare problem than a Linux problem.

Member Avatar for velbon81

Please can someone help me with the criteria to install Redhat 9.0 on Vmware using an XP laptop ?
Awaiting your response!

Member Avatar for jbennet

LISTEN.

You really dont seem to understand the point of VMWare...

VMware emulates a fake computer. When you make a virtual machine in it, you are asked to make a virtual drive. This is a file on your real drive (usually a massive file in your /my documents/ somewhere. When you do anything to the "drives" on your virtualised install you are really just adjusting the contents of this file.

The reason its not finding any drives is because there isnt any because you havent made any yet in the virtual instance.

Virtualisation software does not use your real, physical drives directly. Thats the entire point.

Double post removed. Moved to general Windows Software board.

Secondly, why redhat 9????? Its OLD. Very outdated and no longer supported. Use Red Hat Enterprise (CentOS) or Fedora instead.

Assuming you have your VMWare instance correctly configured, the install process should be exactly the same as on a fresh, brand new, physical machine.

Edited by jbennet because: n/a
Member Avatar for velbon81

Hi Jbennet,
i will try fedora since that is at my reach and please i am downloading then then VMware player 2.5.3 from filehippo.com.
Please could that be VMware 4.0, if not where can i find it. Will you send me the link.
Thanks.
Awaiting your response!

Member Avatar for jbennet

Ah right. VMWare player is crsap. It can only load premade machines, not let you load your own ones. Either byt the full version or use another (free) product e.g. virtualbox.

Member Avatar for velbon81

can you send me the link for virtualbox?

Member Avatar for velbon81

can i run virtualbox on my laptop because this is what they say about it
"VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-qualify"

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