phi gcc wrote:
Hi Mark,
See the user manual for details on the VBoxManage convertfromraw command.
It turns a raw disk image into a VDI (or other).
Thanx, I spoted it in the mean time :) so i will use this along with
other command as given by Huihong to handcraft the initial guest state
for infent OS that don't have a boot loader yet.
Another approach would be to replace the BIOS with your OS... only
possible if you don't need the BIOS of course. VirtualBox supports
specifying a custom "ROM image", but this is a really special way and
you'd be completely on your own, starting in real mode at address f000:fff0.
If that's not an option (lots of work to e.g. set up the hardware etc
etc) and you don't want to spend much time on your own boot loader, have
a look at the off-the-shelf ones. A very flexible one is grub - it
supports many boot variants (disk, net, ...) and supports loading both a
kernel and modules in a microkernel style OS. The multiboot spec is
quite straightforward (essentially a kernel in ELF format which contains
some descriptor data structure). Etherboot/gPXE is also an option, and
implements multiboot as well.
Back in my own kernel hacking days I used Etherboot (on an ISO image for
maximum flexibility), as it turned out that network booting gave the by
far best turnaround time. Today with the far more flexible gPXE you
could even boot off an HTTP server...
The linux world has lots more bootloaders which could be relatively
easily adapted - lilo, the syslinux family of loaders and many more.
Reinventing the wheel is neither attractive nor necessary in this area I
think.
Klaus
Cheers
Phi
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