Hey Dave, On 21 Dec 2009, at 16:03, Dave Bauer wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Gary C Martin <[email protected]>wrote: > >> Hi folks, >> >> Just thought I'd bounce another possible approach pass the list for using a >> regular Soas loaded USB stick on Mac OS X, this one has the obvious benefit >> of allowing you to use the same USB stick on different machines/locations. >> Now, VirtualBox's BIOS does not support booting from a USB stick >> unfortunately, but as it turns out there are some hidden ways to make >> VirtualBox boot what the documentation refers to as "raw disks" rather than >> regular VM disk images (Page 135 in the VB manual, 9.10 Using a raw host >> hard disk from a guest). >> >> *** Caviate lector, the USB stick I'm using does not seem to be saving >> changes between uses, I'm not sure if this is an issue with the stick I >> made, or this approach *** >> >> Here's the steps: >> >> 1) Plug in your soas-2-blueberry USB stick >> >> 2) In a terminal type: >> >> df >> >> You should see a line that says something like the below, make a note of >> the /dev/disk1 it may be different on your Mac depending what hardware you >> have: >> >> /dev/disk1 1206080 1206080 0 100% >> /Volumes/soas-2-blueberry >> >> 3) Mac OS X must not auto mount the USB. If it does you can't create the >> needed vmdk to reference it (you'll get an "VERR_DEV_IO_ERROR"), and the >> documentation warns of potential file corruption if you allow both a host >> and guest OS to tinker with the same raw disk at the same time. The rather >> naughty trick is to go edit your fstab to prevent the specific stick from >> auto-mounting [I hope to find a non techy replacement for this step]: >> >> sudo vim /etc/fstab >> >> ...and append the line: >> >> LABEL=soas-2-blueberry none cd9660 ro,noauto 0 0 >> >> 4) Now make sure to eject the USB volume from your desktop; unplug your >> soas-2-blueberry USB stick; plug it back in again to check. It should _NOT_ >> appear on your desktop this time. >> >> 5) In Terminal run the below VirtualBox command, modifying the .vmdk save >> location, and your /dev/disk1 as needed. This will create a tiny little vmdk >> file that holds the description of the USB stick, and register it with the >> VB media manager so it's available as a disk: >> >> VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename >> /Users/gary/Desktop/soas-2-blueberry.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk1 -register >> >> 6) In VirtualBox create and configure a VM as normal, you should see the >> soas-2-blueberry.vmdk listed as an available existing disk. >> >> 7) All done, time to boot... >> >> Regards, >> --Gary >> >> P.S. There's another way of getting VirtualBox to boot the USB stick on the >> Mac, but I'll give it a couple of tries before reporting back here. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> SoaS mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas > > Gary, > > There is an easier way! That's what I like to hear! :-) > I have created a Virtualbox VM that is basically the boot helper CD on a > very small virtualbox disk. This is programmed to look for the device named > FEDORA for boot. Fab, can you point me to where I can download it (have been digging/searching without luck)? I was hoping the official USB Boot CD image would work for this, it does boot up, but then can't get at the USB and complains it has no root. > 1) Plug in USB > 2) Open Finder. Eject USB. > 3) Start Virtualbox VM > 4) Click Devices Menu, Click USB Devices, select the USB stick. Can you avoid step 2 and step 4 by configuring the VM settings and adding the USB stick (under the "Ports" settings you can add a filter for a specific stick)? When the VM starts it will automatically grab the filtered stick, un-mounting it from the host, and mounting it on the guest – same as fiddling with the USB Devices pop-up, but without the fiddling :) > I tried to write an Applescript to automate ejecting and connecting the USB > to the Virtualbox and ti works reliably on my Macbook but we had trouble > testing on other Macs. Happy to give it a test here if needed. Regards, --Gary _______________________________________________ SoaS mailing list [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas
