Minoca-os/docs/virtualbox.txt

A couple of notes about running on VirtualBox

I recently got Minoca OS booting with VirtualBox, but a couple of settings
needed to be tweaked.

I was testing on a Windows 7 x64 machine running VirtualBox 5.1.8 r111374.

I've selected a machine type of Other, Other/Unknown. I was also able to get
it working with Linux, Ubuntu (64-bit), but had to change the Storage settings
(see below).

In the System settings for the VM, under the Motherboard tab:
 * Chipset must be set to ICH9. Minoca OS requires an APIC, and the ancient
   PIIX3 chipset doesn't have that.
 * Enable I/O APIC must be checked. VirtualBox basically forces you to do this
   once you select ICH9.

If you selected Linux, Ubuntu (64-bit), then you'll need to head into the
settings for Storage:
 * Remove the hard disk from SATA, and add it under IDE. Minoca OS does not yet
   support SATA.

Networking does not yet work in VirtualBox or VMWare, as we desperately need
someone to write the AMD PCNet32 LANCE Ethernet driver.

Creating a disk:
Manual Method:
A vmdk file (used to specify the hard disk to VirtualBox and VMWare) is just a
text file. To create a .vmdk disk file from a flat image, you can use the
following template (between the #### lines).

####
# Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
encoding="windows-1252"
CID=c326ee8a
parentCID=ffffffff
isNativeSnapshot="no"
createType="monolithicFlat"

# Extent description
RW 1048576 FLAT "pc.img" 0

# The Disk Data Base
#DDB

ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "1040"
ddb.geometry.heads = "16"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.longContentID = "c102446c4b4b4547bf42db9ac326ee8a"
ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 9d f1 5b 82 d5-1f ee a1 52 dd 24 73 10"
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "8"
ddb.uuid.image="69a7ab8a-ac25-42c6-b673-6c6ca1a36594"
ddb.uuid.modification="1eb47c96-30a3-48d8-89cc-bfd5706684d2"
ddb.uuid.parent="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
ddb.uuid.parentmodification="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
####

Put the contents of the above template in a file called pc.vmdk in the same
directory as pc.img (or whichever image you're trying to create a vmdk for).

If your pc.img is not 512MB, change the 1048576 in the line RW 1048576 FLAT ...
to the number of sectors in your disk. The number of sectors is the size of
the image in bytes divided by 512. Also change ddb.geometry.cylinders to be
equal to sectors/16/63.

With VBoxManage:

To create a .vmdk disk file from a flat image, you can use the following
command with Virtual Box

$ VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename pc.vmdk -rawdisk pc.img

It will generate a file that has similar content as before, it should take care
of the disk geometry for you as well.