Attaching a physical (raw) disk to VMWare Fusion 4 without BootCamp

I wanted to boot and run my Linux installation from a physical disk inside Mac OS X. There’s no easy guide for this on the web; most want you to use a vmware tool that existed in previous versions in /Library/Application Support/VM* but that file didn’t exist for me.
I think the new VMWare Fusion can read BootCamp config data automatically, but I didn’t want to use BootCamp (long story). Since I had VirtualBox installed, this wasn’t too difficult.

First off, figure out what the mac thinks your disk(s) are called:

chef:ubuntu_test.vmwarevm vijayp$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
...
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: *64.0 GB disk1
/dev/disk2
...
/dev/disk3
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk3
1: Linux Swap 16.5 GB disk3s1
2: Microsoft Basic Data 983.5 GB disk3s2
3: Microsoft Basic Data Untitled 899.4 GB disk3s3


My main drive was /dev/disk1 (for some reason, I decided to use the entire disk for the linux partition) and the data partition was /dev/disk3s2.

After installing VMWare fusion 4, I created a new custom VM set up as Ubuntu 64-bit. This turned up in my Documents folder:

chef:~ vijayp$ cd ~/Documents/Virtual\ Machines.localized/
chef:Virtual Machines.localized vijayp$ ls
Ubuntu 64-bit.vmwarevm
chef:Virtual Machines.localized vijayp$ cd Ubuntu\ 64-bit.vmwarevm/
chef:Ubuntu 64-bit.vmwarevm vijayp$ ls
Ubuntu 64-bit-s001.vmdk Ubuntu 64-bit-s007.vmdk Ubuntu 64-bit.vmdk
Ubuntu 64-bit-s002.vmdk Ubuntu 64-bit-s008.vmdk Ubuntu 64-bit.vmsd
Ubuntu 64-bit-s003.vmdk Ubuntu 64-bit-s009.vmdk Ubuntu 64-bit.vmx
Ubuntu 64-bit-s004.vmdk Ubuntu 64-bit-s010.vmdk Ubuntu 64-bit.vmx.lck
Ubuntu 64-bit-s005.vmdk Ubuntu 64-bit-s011.vmdk Ubuntu 64-bit.vmxf
Ubuntu 64-bit-s006.vmdk Ubuntu 64-bit.plist vmware.log


VMWare has created a default disk that’s striped into 11 pieces (see the *.vmdk files). In order to access the physical drives, I used virtualbox’s toolkit:

chef:Ubuntu 64-bit.vmwarevm vijayp$ sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename disk1.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk1
chef:Ubuntu 64-bit.vmwarevm vijayp$ sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename disk3s2.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk3s2
chef:Ubuntu 64-bit.vmwarevm vijayp$ sudo chown $USER disk*.vmdk


Next you have to edit the VMWare file manually to add the disks, and remove the default one. I’m not sure why the UI won’t let you select these vmdks, but it doesn’t. Make sure the vm is NOT RUNNING, then edit the file. The diffs are pretty trivial:

@@ -2,16 +2,20 @@
config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "8"
vcpu.hotadd = "TRUE"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"
+scsi1.present = "TRUE"
+scsi1.virtualDev = "lsilogic"
memsize = "1024"
mem.hotadd = "TRUE"
scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"
-scsi0:0.fileName = "Ubuntu 64-bit.vmdk"
+scsi0:0.fileName = "disk1.vmdk"
+scsi1:0.present = "TRUE"
+scsi1:0.fileName = "disk3s2.vmdk"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
-ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"
+ide1:0.fileName = "cdrom0"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.connectionType = "nat"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = "FALSE"


Now you can delete the Ubuntu 64-bit*.vmdk files.

I still haven’t figured out how to set the UUID on these disks so linux mounts them correctly, but it’s probably one of ddb.uuid.image and ddb.longContentID in the vmdk file. But it boots, so I can get some work done. I’ll revisit the uuid stuff soon.