What VM drive mounting/manipulation tools do you use?

[SomeGuy]

I'm just wondering what VM drive mounting or manipulation software others use with ReactOS.

Mostly I use the VMWare DiskMount Utility to mount VMDK images used with VirtualBox, and I have also used an old copy of WinImage to insert/extract files to and from raw disk images (mostly for use with QEMU). I seem to recall that Windows 7 comes with the ability to mount VMDK images built in, and of course Linux can mount all kinds of images natively.

Oddly, I haven't seen any free tools for mounting or manipulating VirtualBox VDI files. But perhaps I haven't looked in the right place?

[pajuelo]

If you are using Linux, i know there are a tool called vdifuse that can mount vdi files.

Regards.

[steveh]

I use reactos in virtualbox.

I have installed the virtualbox-tools. But the vbox shared directories unfortunately don't work.

I have installed 7zip in reactos, and use it to tar or untar files and directories.
Tar's advantage is
- transparency of file attributes like the date+hour
- better linux compatibility than zip or 7z
- packing many files or entire directory trees into one file which then is transferred by ftp.

I do export tar files from reactos to the host mostly with the old fashioned "ftp" in reactos commandline.
Sometimes i do also import files in this way.
Of course an ftp server must be running somewhere outside reactos for this to work.

I will give filezilla portable it's next try soon. In the past i did not achieve to make filezilla work in reactos.

But for importing files into reactos, i often create an *iso on the host and then mount it in the reactos virtualbox.

[milon]

I seem to recall that Windows 7 comes with the ability to mount VMDK images built in

I don't know about VMDK, but I use the .VHD format which Windows 7 can mount natively.

[DeadDude]

slightly offtopic...

is everyone having to reboot their ROS install to detect the CD was changed? or am I 'special'?

[steveh]

@DeadDude

I can mount a CD image iso in Reactos on the fly thru virtualbox and i see it in the reactos explorer without rebooting.

[milon]

@DeadDue,
I'm using VBox, and as of build 56737 I can start it up with no CD in it, change to an ISO, change to the host CD drive, and eject it again. ROS tracks all of this, but I have to close and reopen the file manager to see the changes (refresh hasn't been coded yet).

I did discover that if you double-click an empty CD drive, ROS will actually "open" it and give you a completely empty subfolder. I also discovered that double-clicking the white space in any folder view (HDD, CD, etc) will open a duplicate instance of that child window within the ROS file manager. Odd. Even works for the empty CD drives. Weird.

[DeadDude]

hmmm....
? strange ?

I've been using much newer builds and have always had this problem... Might need to start using DaemonTools to mount the ISOs, instead of VMWare's built-in emulation... I don't have an 'eject' button doing it my current way... perhaps that is the problem? I don't know, I'll start a new thread later on this.

But thank you very much for the information!

ON TOPIC:

I checked out VMWare Diskmount Utility. Not sure what version to get... only found 5.5, and it is from 2005...

Also found out if you use 'snapshots' it will get very intense very quick doing this.

[steveh]

@DeadDude

in virtualbox i have always been able to mount ISO's for reactos without any problems

In vmware player <= version 4.0.3 i have had problems to mount ISO's for win8 so possibly your vmware problems are not strictly reactos related?

In the latest version vmware player 4.0.4 i have no problems to mount ISO's for win8.
So maybe ISO mounting by vmware player latest version should also work better for reactos, than with older player.

[SomeGuy]

I checked out VMWare Diskmount Utility. Not sure what version to get... only found 5.5, and it is from 2005...

This is actually why I was asking about alternatives. It hasn't been updated in ages, it is CLI only, doesn't seem to like partitions over 8gb, and it is not very smart when unmounting (have to close explorer windows).

[DeadDude]

I checked out VMWare Diskmount Utility. Not sure what version to get... only found 5.5, and it is from 2005...

This is actually why I was asking about alternatives. It hasn't been updated in ages, it is CLI only, doesn't seem to like partitions over 8gb, and it is not very smart when unmounting (have to close explorer windows).

Ah, I see then.

:whew: thought my googlefoo failed me!

I've gotten to the point of wishing for direct access to the filesystem now that you told me!