Ok, now that I have WiFi working thank to the folks on this list, my next challenge is to get qemu working. I''ve already installed the qemu package from the dag repository (the accellerator will be a future project) and now I''m wondering if I can run the existing XP partition (hda1) using qemu. If so, then I can go to running Linux, specifically CentOS4, full time. Ideas? Matt Lawrence "Your friendly neighborhood sysadmin" 512.838.2645 T/L 678-2645 512.351.1061 (cell) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.caosity.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20050325/3d1556a4/attachment.htm
On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 21:51:50 -0600, Matt Lawrence <mattlaw@us.ibm.com> wrote:> > I''m wondering if I can run the existing XP partition (hda1) using qemu. If > so, then I can go to running Linux, specifically CentOS4, full time. > > Ideas?I recently tried using qemu to run an XP guest with my CentOS 3.4 system as host. However, I was using a virtual hard drive rather than an existing disk partition. My experience was that it runs fine as long as you never turn it off. If at any time I allowed XP to do the equivalent of a full power-off shutdown, the next time I started it up it would fail to recognize the disk (read errors). The only way I got it working was to use the qemu console to suspend the guest and snapshot it; then on restart I''d reload the snapshot. However I eventually ran into problems with this as well, because you can''t restart the guest with any differences in the set of connected devices -- e.g., if the CDROM was specified on the qemu command line when starting the first time, it must be present again when restarting. Also, the system clock on the guest would be reset to the time of the snapshot. I found something on a qemu mailing list indicating that if you first format the virtual disk with windows98 e.g. fdisk, then install XP, the read errors go away. However, I didn''t get as far as attempting that. If you (or anyone) does get it working, I''d appreciate a summary of how to configure the networking as well.
Bart Schaefer wrote:> I recently tried using qemu to run an XP guest with my CentOS 3.4 > system as host. However, I was using a virtual hard drive rather than > an existing disk partition. > > My experience was that it runs fine as long as you never turn it off. > > If at any time I allowed XP to do the equivalent of a full power-off > shutdown, the next time I started it up it would fail to recognize the > disk (read errors).This is a known issue with qemu. It has been fixed in CVS. You can either wait for new qemu release, or fetch current development version from CVS, compile and install it. An advantage of current CVS version is that accellerator module works with it (been using it for almost a week, works great). To get CVS version, either go to http://savannah.nongnu.org/cvs/?group=qemu and follow instructions for setting up access to anonymous CVS. Or if you are not able to use CVS (for example, company firewall), you can fetch daily snapshots from: http://www.dad-answers.com/qemu/ -- Aleksandar Milivojevic <amilivojevic@pbl.ca> Pollard Banknote Limited Systems Administrator 1499 Buffalo Place Tel: (204) 474-2323 ext 276 Winnipeg, MB R3T 1L7
Matt Lawrence wrote:> > Ok, now that I have WiFi working thank to the folks on this list, my > next challenge is to get qemu working. I''ve already installed the qemu > package from the dag repository (the accellerator will be a future > project) and now I''m wondering if I can run the existing XP partition > (hda1) using qemu. If so, then I can go to running Linux, specifically > CentOS4, full time.Qemu emulates entire PC. So whatever you give it as "disk image" must contain MBR. My guess is specifying WinXP partition isn''t going to work (it is partition, not disk). Now, specifying actual disk (/dev/hda or something similar) *might* work, but on the other hand qemu (and Windows XP) will have access to your entire disk. Which might *trash* your data. Make sure you do not have anything Linux and XP can read/write to accessible to both of them (for example, partition where Win XP is). If both of them try to write to it, it will trash the partition for sure. Plus, if you give actuall disk as parameter to qemu, and it boots Linux from it instead of WinXP (for example, WinXP reboots for whatever reason, and your lilo or grub configuration boots Linux by default), you can probably say bye-bye to your data and reinstall... All in all, very tricky and dangerous. -- Aleksandar Milivojevic <amilivojevic@pbl.ca> Pollard Banknote Limited Systems Administrator 1499 Buffalo Place Tel: (204) 474-2323 ext 276 Winnipeg, MB R3T 1L7
centos-bounces@caosity.org wrote on 03/28/2005 09:55:16 AM:> Qemu emulates entire PC. So whatever you give it as "disk image" must > contain MBR. My guess is specifying WinXP partition isn''t going to work> (it is partition, not disk). Now, specifying actual disk (/dev/hda or > something similar) *might* work, but on the other hand qemu (and Windows> XP) will have access to your entire disk. Which might *trash* your > data. Make sure you do not have anything Linux and XP can read/write to> accessible to both of them (for example, partition where Win XP is). If> both of them try to write to it, it will trash the partition for sure. > > Plus, if you give actuall disk as parameter to qemu, and it boots Linux > from it instead of WinXP (for example, WinXP reboots for whatever > reason, and your lilo or grub configuration boots Linux by default), you> can probably say bye-bye to your data and reinstall...Already had that happen. The grub timer counts really, really fast under qemu. Linux was well on its way to booting by the time I managed to kill it. After pondering the issue for a while, I believe that there shouldn''t be any major technical issues with generating a "fake" partition table & boot loader by intercepting all accesses outside the range of the desired target partitions. Since I''ve never been inside the entrails of qemu, I''m certainly not qualified to make such a change. Thoughts? I also would like to thank the subscribers to this list for their patience in reading all of this almost off topic thread. I''m running CentOS4 on my work notebook and as soon as figure out how to run the few necessary Windows applications under qemu, I will be running Linux full time. And, I may even manage to convert a number of folks to CentOS4 as well. This list has been amazingly helpful. Thank you. -- Matt -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.caosity.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20050328/975f66d9/attachment.htm