--- "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu> wrote:
> Hmm -- can that handle the partition I have NetBSD in now?
> 

As far as I can tell, no. VMware uses a disk image file similar to Qemu or
Bochs. As far as I know, there is no way to tell it to directly utilize a
filesystem on a disk device (at least in the free VMware Player version).

Also, VMware Player provides a mostly [completely??] virtualized
environment, again similar to what Bochs and Qemu does. VMware Player is
more like Qemu, in that there is very little emulation of the CPU,
therefore the virtual environment runs at near native speed of the host
system. 

So, if your goal is to test NetBSD under a laptop environment, then VMware
Player is probably not the route to go. Chances are it would "see" a
virtualized desktop system rather than the native devices of the laptop.

You probably want to look at Xen.

--
Ed Wensell III

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