[Qemu-devel] Qemu Windows Host & Client Feedback

[Qemu-devel] Qemu Windows Host & Client Feedback

[Doctor Bill]

Hello,

I am a new user of qemu.  I notice the user forum does not exist
anymore, so I hope this is the appropriate place for comments.

After spending a day attempting to configure Bochs, I was pleased to
find qemu works almost directly out of the box.  My goal was to run
Windows 98se under Windows XP so I could test software without running
my old noisy machines.

The first problem I noticed is that with the 0.70 version, keys are
not mapped correctly.  For example, if I try to type in a URL as soon
as I press the letter e explorer opens.  As soon as I type the letter
m, the window minimizes....   I installed a the "CVS" snapshot and
that problem appears to be fixed.

I then got curious and wondered how fast is the virtual machine
running.  At times it seems like a 200MHz machine, and at other times
it seems much faster.  So I installed Norton Performance Test from my
Norton System Works 2003 CD.  However, whenever I launch the
application I get the blue screen.  Afterwards, other programs
including explorer periodically cause blue screens.  When I reboot,
the qemu machine reports it failed to regrab the mouse and freezes
until I close the window.

Obviously more work is needed, but it is no worse quality wise than
when I first beta tested VMWARE.  I am particularly impressed with all
the hardware platform that can be simulated.  I am considering trying
OSX simulation next.  If the performance is comparable, then the
simulated machine will be only slightly slower than my G3.

Bill

Re: [Qemu-devel] Qemu Windows Host & Client Feedback

[Hetz Ben Hamo]

Hi Bill,

As for the forum, I just updated my DNS records, so in the mean while
you can access the forum at: http://qemu.dad-answers.com/

As for PPC emulation - you can't run OS X yet. 

Thanks,
Hetz

On 6/30/05, Doctor Bill <docbill@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am a new user of qemu.  I notice the user forum does not exist
> anymore, so I hope this is the appropriate place for comments.
> 
> After spending a day attempting to configure Bochs, I was pleased to
> find qemu works almost directly out of the box.  My goal was to run
> Windows 98se under Windows XP so I could test software without running
> my old noisy machines.
> 
> The first problem I noticed is that with the 0.70 version, keys are
> not mapped correctly.  For example, if I try to type in a URL as soon
> as I press the letter e explorer opens.  As soon as I type the letter
> m, the window minimizes....   I installed a the "CVS" snapshot and
> that problem appears to be fixed.
> 
> I then got curious and wondered how fast is the virtual machine
> running.  At times it seems like a 200MHz machine, and at other times
> it seems much faster.  So I installed Norton Performance Test from my
> Norton System Works 2003 CD.  However, whenever I launch the
> application I get the blue screen.  Afterwards, other programs
> including explorer periodically cause blue screens.  When I reboot,
> the qemu machine reports it failed to regrab the mouse and freezes
> until I close the window.
> 
> Obviously more work is needed, but it is no worse quality wise than
> when I first beta tested VMWARE.  I am particularly impressed with all
> the hardware platform that can be simulated.  I am considering trying
> OSX simulation next.  If the performance is comparable, then the
> simulated machine will be only slightly slower than my G3.
> 
> Bill
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Qemu-devel mailing list
> Qemu-devel@nongnu.org
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
>

[Qemu-devel] Re: Qemu Windows Host & Client Feedback

[Doctor Bill]

On 6/30/05, Doctor Bill <docbill@gmail.com> wrote:
> The first problem I noticed is that with the 0.70 version, keys are
> not mapped correctly.  For example, if I try to type in a URL as soon
> as I press the letter e explorer opens.  As soon as I type the letter
> m, the window minimizes....   I installed a the "CVS" snapshot and
> that problem appears to be fixed.

It looks like I was premature in reporting the snapshot version fixes
the problem.
Even with the snapshot version, the same mapping problem occurs sometimes.
Usually, it is after a soft reboot.  For example, if I restart from
Windows 98 se to
DOS and then back to Windows 98 se then I get the key mapping where keys
act as hot keys regardless of focus.  However, I have experienced a few times
when the keyboard started off in that mode.  The general workaround seems to
be to do a shutdown of the virtual machine and then restart QEMU.

I have also found many applications which require a reboot run into
problems.  For example, some have already mentioned that GHOST boot
disks fail to work.  A problem not reported is that attempting to
convert C: drive from FAT16 to FAT32 using the windows utility will
also cause a general protection fault.  The workaround for the fat
conversion is
to mount the image as drive D.  For the GHOST problem I ended up
working around the problem by restoring the partition as real
partitions on the host OS and then converting them to image files.

Bill

[Qemu-devel] Re: Qemu Windows Host & Client Feedback

[Christian Walther]

Doctor Bill wrote:
> Even with the snapshot version, the same mapping problem occurs sometimes.
> Usually, it is after a soft reboot.  For example, if I restart from
> Windows 98 se to
> DOS and then back to Windows 98 se then I get the key mapping where keys
> act as hot keys regardless of focus.  However, I have experienced a few times
> when the keyboard started off in that mode.  The general workaround seems to
> be to do a shutdown of the virtual machine and then restart QEMU.

Could this be a case of stuck modifier keys? Qemu's notion of which 
modifier keys are pressed can sometimes get out of sync with the real 
state of the keys. E.g. when you press the alt key to alt-tab away from 
qemu, it still thinks that the alt key is pressed afterwards, because it 
didn't receive the key-up event, not having focus at that point. This 
can be corrected by pressing and releasing the stuck modifier key after 
you switch back to Qemu.

  -Christian

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: Qemu Windows Host & Client Feedback

[Josef Moffett]

Christian Walther wrote:

> Doctor Bill wrote:
>
>> Even with the snapshot version, the same mapping problem occurs 
>> sometimes.
>> Usually, it is after a soft reboot.  For example, if I restart from
>> Windows 98 se to
>> DOS and then back to Windows 98 se then I get the key mapping where keys
>> act as hot keys regardless of focus.  However, I have experienced a 
>> few times
>> when the keyboard started off in that mode.  The general workaround 
>> seems to
>> be to do a shutdown of the virtual machine and then restart QEMU.
>
>
> Could this be a case of stuck modifier keys? Qemu's notion of which 
> modifier keys are pressed can sometimes get out of sync with the real 
> state of the keys. E.g. when you press the alt key to alt-tab away 
> from qemu, it still thinks that the alt key is pressed afterwards, 
> because it didn't receive the key-up event, not having focus at that 
> point. This can be corrected by pressing and releasing the stuck 
> modifier key after you switch back to Qemu.
>
>  -Christian
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Qemu-devel mailing list
> Qemu-devel@nongnu.org
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel

I have noticed a similar "problem" with the numlock. It doesn't actually 
bother me as the solution is very simple, but when I start qemu with the 
numlock switched on then in qemu to get numlock on I have to turn it 
'off' (ie no led on the keyboard) and vice versa.

Just a comment, about the keyboard state, perhaps in final polishing 
this may be considered important, but in actual doing stuff with qemu it 
doesn't actually reduce workability.
 
Cheers

Joe

Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: Qemu Windows Host & Client Feedback

[Doctor Bill]

Yes, it definitely acts like a stuck key.  But none of the pressing
none of the keys on my keyboard relieves the problem.  Only restarting
the QEMU virtual machine.  However, I
did figure out 90% of the time the problem occurs because I press the
windows key to switch tasks.  If I remember to first press CTRL+ALT+2
first, I completely avoid those occurrences.  Another 5% happens when
I don't focus the mouse onto the window before Windows finishes
starting.  Again, if I am patient I can avoid this 5%.  The last 5%
consist of cases when another window pops up and takes the focus on
it's own, or for yet unexplained reasons.  About the only way to avoid
this 5% is if I avoid multitasking foreground processes.

I would say this is a very serious usability problem, but for "alpha"
software I consider it mild because everything has a workaround.  More
serious to me are the networking problems with SAMBA.  However, I am
not convinced those are bug.  It could just be I am making some bad
guesses on how to configure samba due to lack of documentation.  So I
will try not to take up peoples time on this list until I know if it
is user errors or software
errors.

Bill