Using Virtualbox to access Linux installation

[Phil Smith]

I'm not sure if this is possible but I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to use Virtualbox or something similar to boot into an Linux installation from within Windows? I have a dual boot system and I'd like to be able to have both Linux and Windows running side by side simultaneously. I know I can create a virtual Linux installation in Windows and use this, but is there a way to access my main Linux install without booting directly into it?

 

Many thanks in advance for any suggestions!

 

Edit: Basically what I'm looking for is something similar to Parallels that lets you virtualise your Windows install from inside Mac OS

[jpbadger9]

Use the Systernal Disk2VHD program to create a virtual hard drive of your current Linux installation.

Set that VHD up as a Virual Box machine in Windows 10.  You should be able to access your Linux data files from Linux installation on your hard drive.  If you make any changes to your bootable Linux setup, you will need to create a new VHD each time if you want the Virtual Machine to match.  The tricky part is to get your NIC and USB ports to pass through to the Virtual Machine, but it can be done.

 

[GwenFX]

I can't speak for using disk2vhd for virtualizing anything other than windows, but it should be doable. It's kind of round about but at the bare minimum you should be able to image the hard drive using DD to an IMG file and use VirtualBox to convert resulting image to virtualbox's proprietary vdi. Some settings would probably have to be tweaked but it should be able to boot then you can delete what ever partitions you don't need, if your windows and linux are sitting on the same disk. And if you want to convert the virtual disk to something that works with something other than Oracal's software you can just attach a new virtual disk to the machine in the format you want and clone the os over to it, this has been the easiest way I've found to convert disk images there might be an easier method. With all of that said that would be if you wanted to convert your stuff to Vm and not keep around the install.

 

After a quick google search though it would seem it's possible with oracles virtualbox to load up a OS on an attached drive via "Raw hard disk access". I can gander that it should be possible to load up the os existing on the same drive as long as you never try to boot into the Host os from the virtualization. So like if you're chainloading the windows loader via grub maybe increase the time threshold to do that, or just don't chainload the windows bootloader as you haven't needed to do that in years.