Running Windows 7 from the Bootcamp partition in VirtualBox

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Mac OS X has this nifty feature called Bootcamp that allows you setup a dual-boot system with Windows. Setting up Windows is fairly painless. Using Windows however requires a reboot. VirtualBox is a cool (and free) tool to install multiple operating systems in virtual machines, so you can run Windows or Ubuntu on your Mac without rebooting, right inside Mac OS X. It is even possible to use VirtualBox with the partition created by Bootcamp, so you can run the same copy of Windows (with all your settings and software intact) without rebooting your Mac.

Gianpaolo over at phaq has written a great and easy-to-follow tutorial to get VirtualBox up and running your Bootcamp partition. I’m not going to plagiarise and fully copy Gianpaolo’s work here, just head over to his blog and follow the steps.

I would however like to make one addition. Gianpaolo describes how to create the virtual hard disk files that VirtualBox needs to read the Bootcamp partition:

VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk0 -filename win7raw.vmdk -partitions 3

For VirtualBox to actually read those files I had to set the permissions of the two files that were created. If you find that VirtualBox is unable to read win7raw.vmdk the following command might fix it:

sudo chmod 777 *.vmdk

Obviously make sure you are in the directory where you created the vmdk files when you do this.

Review: The Courtesan and the Samurai

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Plot

The book starts with two separate stories. Hana says goodbye to her husband, a samurai commander, who is about to embark on a quest to defend Japan’s capital Edo against southern invasion. After his departure she is driven out of their house by enemy soldiers and flees. She meets a woman who promises to take her to a safe haven, but instead sells her to a high-class brothel in Edo’s famous pleasure quarters: the Yoshiwara.

Yozo is a high-ranking soldier in the army of the shogun, fighting and losing the final battle in a civil war that brings revolution to Japan. He gets captured, but his comrades manage to break him free. Now a fugitive he seeks refuge in the one place in Japan not subject to outside authority: the Yoshiwara.

In the Yoshiwara is where the two stories converge and Hana and Yozo get entangled in a somewhat predictable love affair.

Review

While fiction, the historic facts of the novel are accurate. Some of the ideas and feelings of the characters are a little oversimplified. After being forced to become a prostitute Hana is quick to make peace with the fact she will have to sleep with lots of men. When it gets hairy for Yozo gets through it without too much trouble, staying alive despite the enormous odds. This makes the story fairly predictable. It is nevertheless a good read with some parts even being gripping.

Mark: 7 (out of 10)

Buy this book on Amazon