Introducing the MOA-Live CD

Virtual machines boot what ever ...

+         Live CDs boot where ever ...

Let's boot what ever - where ever ...

Select options with your mouse

This screenshot shows the start-screen of the MOA-Live CD.
You can translate MOA as "Multi-OS-Addicts" or "Multi-OS-Admin" - at the moment both variants are the same.
Let's have a look at the different sections:

Bart PE: this section starts with a BartPE build with 2k3 and integrated VMware Player.

Puppy Linux: this boots into Puppy Linux
BSD: boot into FTP-installations of OpenBSD, NetBSD or FreeBSD
Linux: boot into Tom's Rootfloppy
Exotic: boot into Reactos, Menuet-OS ...
System Rescue CD: GENTOO-based Linux - contains a free Partitionmagic-clone
GRML-mini CD: Knoppix-based text tools

Ultimate Boot CD: can't make a better collection - so let's integrate the UBCD
Commercial Tools: this section will boot into tools like Ghost or Partitionmagic

The MOA LiveCD will never be available as a full Download - you will have to built it yourself.

The main ingredient to the MOA LiveCD is the VMware Workstation. At the moment I find it easier to build this based on Bart's PE. Maybe on a future version I will also built based on Puppy Linux ...
I have already built some Plugins for Bart's PE - but I found that many users had their problems to reproduce this on their own. That is the reason why I now change to a more complete approach.
The first release of the MOA Live CD will come with a BartPE standalone-plugin. You will only have to add your selection of drivers and your Windows-source CD and a fresh download of Bart's PEbuilder.
As it is possible to have multiple BartPE-builts on one CD I plan to add more options like:
WS 4.5.2 , VMplayer ,WS 5.5 ...
All this variants can be added as a RAMloader-version as well.

MISSION-STATEMENT: Boot what ever -where ever

lets get started

VM-live

original size:

This is a screenshot that shows the current state of the WS5-plugin
You can see NT4, RedHat 6.2, NetBSD and Solaris running in a VM at the same time.
The 4 VMs are stored in a Firewire Traveldisk. The Solaris-VM puts a heavy-load on the system - but once it is up that settles down to an acceptable level. All 4 VMs use slightly more than 1GB RAM. At the time of this screenshot I used a RAMdrive of 256MB and a pagefile of 512MB on local drive C:\ - If I need more power I can use a "RAMfile" instead. The RAMfile - as I call it - is a virtual disk that I store somewhere on the local harddisks or on my Traveldisk - the location doesn't really matter. Without the 256MB for the usual RAMdrive I can think about loading BartPE into RAM - this kills the biggest bottleneck of this setup - the slow CD-drive.
The BartPE-build that you see on the screenshot is a slightly modified Reatogo XPE 1.0.3 with the extended RAMdisk-version. Sourcesystem is XP-sp2.
At the moment the setup of the virtual Nics has a minor bug - once that is resolved I'll post it here. The 2k3 version doesn't have this networking problems. Now it uses straight nu2menu and prompts for a cheatcode at startup.

If you enter for example 16gs the startup.bat extracts a prepartitioned virtual disk to C:\ and mounts it so that it transparently replaces the usual Ramdrive. This safes a lot of RAM - RAM that you can better use for your guests or to load BartPE into it.

Nice GUI for VMware-vdiskmanager

Have a look at Robert D. Petruskas site - he has created some very nice GUIs for VMware's diskmount-tool and for the vdiskmanager.
Rob likes to claim that the GUI for the diskmanager is a CO-production - don't believe that! He has done all the GUI-stuff - only some ideas are based on my thoughts ;-)

Unsorted stuff

• VMX-builder    NEW
• Disk-geometrie-table    NEW
• more than one VM in one folder
• always start at a fixed date
• virtual disks in custom size   UPDATED
• converting IDE to SCSI
• useing a transparent bridge
• run several REDOs from one Master-disk
• was ist ein Snapshot ?
• wie speichert VMware die Festplatten der Gäste
• a guided tour for new users

Linux-hacker wanted !

Have a look here - maybe you can help Roland alias devzero ...

About this site ...

This is a private website of a VMware enthusiast. It is a trial to fill some of the white spaces in the VMware-documentation. Please keep in mind that I am not working for VMware.inc. So if you use any of the information you find here you do this on your own risk. You can leave your comments here. Most of the things you will find here are the result of my own observations and my 'work' in the VMware-community and the german VMware-user Forum at vmware.itst.org - in both places you can find me under the alias continuum. If you are an IT-professional and find my site useful - please make a small donation.