HD Install :: Cannot do HD install in Virtual Machine

Folks, apologies in advance if I'm missing something stupid, but here goes...

I'm trying to do an HD install of DSL (4.30) in a virtual machine running under Mac OS X. Doing an HDinstall or a Frugal install (lilo or grub), I have the same problem in both VMware Fusion, and Parallels Desktop.

The problem as best I can tell, is that DSL does not see the virtual hard drive that VMware and Parallels create.

When I try a frugal install, it always fails because it cannot find the hard drive (I've tried hda, hda1, hda2, sda, sda1, sda2, etc.). It can see scd0, which is the virtual CD drive on which the DSL ISO is mounted as a virtual LiveCD. But it cannot find a virtual hard drive.

When I check the System Stats and look under mounts, there's no hard disk there.

When I try an "install to hard drive" (instead of frugal install), it seems to be formatting the HD, but then the install to hard drive app just quits.

When I try to boot the DSL live CD with the install command, it just boots into the normal Live CD desktop.

When I try to use cfdisk to format a partition, it too cannot find any.

Any ideas what I'm missing here?

Thanks!

Matt

Update: in Parallels I can format the HD with cfdisk when I choose "install" boot command.

But - after I create a partition (hda1), make it bootable, and do the install, the system hangs when it actually tries to boot from the HD.

I do notice that when the system has been installed, and it's about to reboot, there's a warning message saying the partition is not "active" - BUT, in cfdisk there's no option or flag I can find that toggles the partition as active on inactive (there's only bootable or not bootable).

Anyone have any help on this? Thanks!

Best,
Matt

active = bootable in cfdisk-talk, but that should not affect anything, only the windows MBR and ???linux look for an active partition.

Could you try Qemu?

Also, try "dmesg | grep hd" to see if any HD's are found

original here.