Re: [Freedos-user] virt-install freedos

[Jon Brase]

>I believe the simplest will be to create the VM on another machine and learn 
>how to import it to the host machine.

No, the simplest thing is to open up virt-manager on the other machine, go to 
"File -> Add connection", fill out the dialog to connect to the host machine, 
then go to "File -> New virtual machine" and select the connection you just 
added in the "connection" dropdown. Once you've done that, you can create and 
use a VM on the host machine exactly as if it were local to the machine you're 
running virt-manager on. That's the beauty of virt-manager: you can administer 
VMs on anything you can reach by ssh just as if they were local.
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Re: [Freedos-user] virt-install freedos

[Jon Brase]

>KVM is the underlying hypervisor here. It uses QEMU tools for creating disk
images and things, but it doesn't use the core QEMU emulator for
running x86 OSes on x86.

KVM is a kernel component, so userland processes use it for things, not the 
other way around (specifically, it's a virtualization driver that turns the 
kernel into a hypervisor). It's more accurate to say that when the architecture 
of the guest OS matches that of the host CPU, QEMU uses the host CPU via KVM 
rather than emulating it.

In any case, Cesar was talking about running QEMU via a front end vs. launching 
it bare, and that's independent of whether QEMU is using its own emulation or 
KVM as the backend to provide a CPU for the VM.


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Re: [Freedos-user] virt-install freedos

[crg]

Hi Louis,

> KVM/qemu as presented by virt-manager/virsh does something funny with the 
> config of the VM.  After initial boot it’ll “forget” about the CDROM.  Seems 
> like it’s intended for OSes that don’t need to reboot after formatting the 
> primary drive.  I saw this behavior in RHEL and Fedora using Cockpit, 
> virt-manager, virsh.
> 
> Eventually I was able to install FreeDOS but I had to manually add back the 
> ISO and also manually fix the boot order.


I believe the simplest will be to create the VM on another machine and learn 
how to import it to the host machine.

Thanks for the help and the reference.

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Re: [Freedos-user] virt-install freedos

[Liam Proven]

On Mon, 23 May 2022 at 04:02,  wrote:
>
> I'm trying to install FreeDOS in a virtual machine via virt-install, as the 
> host machine is remote and doesn't have a graphical environment, so I only 
> have access via ssh. Still, I can export the installer screen via VNC.
>
> The installation process loads, and I can get to the part of creating the 
> primary partition, but I need to restart the machine after partitioning, and 
> I cannot resume the installation from that point forward.

OK.

> Does anyone have experience with virt-install + FreeDOS?

Well, no, but I have used KVM

This is normal behaviour for KVM, whatever UI you use to control it.

It does a strange temporary-attach of a CD image *for the first run
only* and then the developers assumed the OS was fully installed and
automatically detach the CD image.

You can manually attach the ISO instead and then it will stay there
until you eject it. That may be preferable.

Another alternative: use a Linux boot ISO to make the partitions for
DOS, and copy the the VHD image into place afterwards.

You should be able to use Virtual Machine Manager remotely over ssh
with no need for X.11 or VNC. In theory a VM created with any tool
that talks to KVM should be able to manage the same VMs.

VMM worked for me as it's vaguely similar to VirtualBox and VMware
player/workstation/server, which I am personally more familiar with.

> It would probably be more straightforward for me to use qemu directly, but as 
> I already have several VMs running managed by virt-manager, I wanted to keep 
> using it for FreeDOS.

No problem. You don't need QEMU itself. It's an emulator. KVM is the
underlying hypervisor here. It uses QEMU tools for creating disk
images and things, but it doesn't use the core QEMU emulator for
running x86 OSes on x86.

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Re: [Freedos-user] SoundBlaster volume control for the distro

[Jerome Shidel]

Hi, 

> On May 11, 2022, at 4:09 PM, Eric Auer  wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi!
> 
> It seems our distro has no volume control or mixer tool yet,
> so it would be nice to add one. We can start with the command
> line tool SBMIX, although something with Text-graphical user
> interface would of course be even more cool :-)
> 
> https://www.bttr-software.de/products/sbmix/
> 
> Thanks! Regards, Eric


Well, there are several such mixers available with suitable licenses. 

I wrote one myself back in the early 90’s. I recall it was a painful task that 
took several long days. It involved a lot of guessing and test probing my sound 
card I/O ports. It resulted in numerous system freezes, crashes and reboots. 
Once I worked it all out, I created a <6k command line mixer program and a 
separate (not used by the cmdln program) <1k program loadable/embeddable 
driver. 

Back when I made a bunch of my ancient pascal code publicly available, I put 
the sources and precompiled versions up on GitHub at 
https://github.com/shidel/DustyTP7  . I 
still have a bunch of other things to put up there. However, I just haven’t had 
the time or motivation to figure out what unit versions go with what program 
sources and other such mundane things. My code repos were not as nicely 
organized back then. 

Anyhow, I just thought I’d mention the one I made back then. I suspect the BTTR 
version is probably better. After all, mine was made with a lot of "guess 
work", "trial and error” and has not been updated in roughly 3 decades. 

:-)

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[Freedos-user] virt-install freedos

[Jon Brase]

>It would probably be more straightforward for me to use qemu directly, but as 
>I already have several VMs running managed by virt-manager, I wanted to keep 
>using it for FreeDOS.

So virt-install is a tool for virt-manager, but I don't think I've ever used it 
directly (there's a good possibility the VM creation wizard for virt-manager 
uses it on the back end, I've never peeked under the hood to confirm that). 
Virt-manager can manage VMs on remote hosts, so I use the full-up graphical 
environment even for my headless VM host.


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Re: [Freedos-user] virt-install freedos

[Jon Brase]

>KVM/qemu as presented by virt-manager/virsh does something funny with the 
>config of the VM.  After initial boot it’ll “forget” about the CDROM.

I think what's happening is that it detaches the disk image if the virtual CD 
drive receives an eject command. On real hardware, if the software opens the CD 
tray but you still want the install media for the next boot, you just push the 
tray back in instead of removing the disk. On virtual hardware, if "eject" is 
interpreted as "detach", the ejection becomes a bit more of a hassle.
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