Re: [Qemu-discuss] running a system installer under QEMU

[Dale R. Worley]

> From: address@hidden

> I've installed a system to /dev/sda6 with the machine booted from 
> the installer diskette.  That system boots as expected.
> 
> Also attempted to install the system to /dev/sda5 with the diskette 
> content running under QEMU as described here. 
> http://www.ocp.inf.ethz.ch/wiki/Documentation/Installation#toc23
> No problem is evident in the installation process but that system 
> will not boot.

What do you mean by "the system will not boot"?

You've set up a virtual machine, and within it, run an installer
diskette which set up a hard drive.

If you reboot the virtual machine, does it boot correctly?

I suspect what you mean is, "Having loaded the hard drive within the
virtual machine, I can't boot the physical machine off the hard
drive."

The problem is probably that the characteristics of the physical
machine are different from those of the virtual machine, sufficiently
different that the boot code cannot locate the proper drive within the
physical machine.

Also, I note at the URL you provided the statement "These instructions
are tentative and do not yet yield a working Oberon system."

> I don't understand how the installer produces such different boot 
> sectors in the two cases.  How can an installer run under QEMU to 
> obtain a result just as if it was running from the boot device?

The problem that I most expect is the matter of disk interfaces.  The
boot loader for reading a SCSI disk might be quite different from the
boot loader for reading an IDE disk.

You can adjust the disk interface that the virtual machine sees by
using the if= parameter of the -disk option rather than the -hda
option.

Dale