[Qemu-devel] wrong bios.bin file in Ubuntu Linux 7.10 causes blue screen on w2k guest

[Qemu-devel] wrong bios.bin file in Ubuntu Linux 7.10 causes blue screen on w2k guest

[Markus Schulz]

Hello,

this email is just for the record. I have a Windows 2000 image that was 
created under Windows XP with Qemumanager40. Today I installed Ubuntu 
7.10 and I thought I could just copy the file over and everything would 
work. But the image did not start at first, I always got a blue screen 
at the boot up. After some hours of trying I found out the the BIOS file 
on Linux was only 64KB large and the BIOS file on Windows 128KB. After I 
copied the file from Windows to Linux I was able to use the w2k image 
under Linux. I didn't find anything about this problem here or somewhere 
else, I'm not sure what is going on. But I hope this email may helps 
someone else...

Best Regards,
Markus Schulz

Re: [Qemu-devel] wrong bios.bin file in Ubuntu Linux 7.10 causes blue screen on w2k guest

[Soren Hansen]

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On Thu, Nov 22, 2007 at 02:08:20AM -0500, Markus Schulz wrote:
> Today I installed Ubuntu 7.10 and I thought I could just copy the file
> over and everything would work.  But the image did not start at first,
> I always got a blue screen at the boot up. After some hours of trying
> I found out the the BIOS file on Linux was only 64KB large and the
> BIOS file on Windows 128KB. After I copied the file from Windows to
> Linux I was able to use the w2k image under Linux. I didn't find
> anything about this problem here or somewhere else, I'm not sure what
> is going on. 

Ubuntu and Debian use the bios from the Bochs project. I'm not sure
where the bios.bin shipped inside qemu (and is probably used in most
other places) comes from or what it's built from?

-- 
Soren Hansen
Ubuntu Server Team
http://www.ubuntu.com/

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Re: [Qemu-devel] wrong bios.bin file in Ubuntu Linux 7.10 causes blue screen on w2k guest

[Markus Schulz]

Hello Soren,

Thank you for your response; I think the file can be found here:

http://cvs.savannah.nongnu.org/viewvc/qemu/pc-bios/?root=qemu

BIOS.bin 
<http://cvs.savannah.nongnu.org/viewvc/qemu/pc-bios/bios.bin?root=qemu&view=log> 
	 *1.20* 
<http://cvs.savannah.nongnu.org/viewvc/*checkout*/qemu/pc-bios/bios.bin?revision=1.20&root=qemu> 
	 9 months 	 bellard 	 reset rombios32 area
bios.diff 
<http://cvs.savannah.nongnu.org/viewvc/qemu/pc-bios/bios.diff?root=qemu&view=log> 
	 *1.18* 
<http://cvs.savannah.nongnu.org/viewvc/qemu/pc-bios/bios.diff?revision=1.18&root=qemu&view=markup> 
	 9 months 	 bellard 	 reset rombios32 area


As far as I understand Qemu uses the BIOS from the Bochs project and the 
diff is applied for Qemu and it becomes the Qemu BIOS. I think every 
Qemu installation should use this Qemu BIOS, the BIOS that is made for 
this project and not the original Bochs BIOS. Are you able to fix this 
in Ubuntu?

BTW the Ubuntu has the same problem like Windows, if I try to start a 
image of Ubuntu with the wrong BIOS it crashes too.

Best Regards,
Markus Schulz

Re: [Qemu-devel] wrong bios.bin file in Ubuntu Linux 7.10 causes blue screen on w2k guest

[Soren Hansen]

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On Thu, Nov 22, 2007 at 01:47:22PM -0500, Markus Schulz wrote:
> Thank you for your response; I think the file can be found here:
> http://cvs.savannah.nongnu.org/viewvc/qemu/pc-bios/?root=qemu

> As far as I understand Qemu uses the BIOS from the Bochs project and
> the diff is applied for Qemu and it becomes the Qemu BIOS.

If that's really the case, I'm curious why it's distributed in its
binary form rather than being built at runtime. Fabrice, can you shed
some light on this?

> I think every Qemu installation should use this Qemu BIOS, the BIOS
> that is made for this project and not the original Bochs BIOS. Are you
> able to fix this in Ubuntu?

Debian and Ubuntu have fairly strict policies about stuff shipped in
binary form in source packages, so unless qemu is changed to build this
bios at build time, that's not going to happen.
I'm also not familiar with the changes in the bios.diff. Are they
specific to qemu or could the theoretically be applied to upstream bochs
without any ill side effects?

> BTW the Ubuntu has the same problem like Windows, if I try to start a
> image of Ubuntu with the wrong BIOS it crashes too.

What do you mean exactly by "image"? Disk image + snapshot?

-- 
Soren Hansen
Ubuntu Server Team
http://www.ubuntu.com/

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Re: [Qemu-devel] wrong bios.bin file in Ubuntu Linux 7.10 causes blue screen on w2k guest

[andrzej zaborowski]

On 23/11/2007, Soren Hansen <soren@ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 22, 2007 at 01:47:22PM -0500, Markus Schulz wrote:
> > Thank you for your response; I think the file can be found here:
> > http://cvs.savannah.nongnu.org/viewvc/qemu/pc-bios/?root=qemu
>
> > As far as I understand Qemu uses the BIOS from the Bochs project and
> > the diff is applied for Qemu and it becomes the Qemu BIOS.
>
> If that's really the case, I'm curious why it's distributed in its
> binary form rather than being built at runtime.

build-time?
Perhaps because the (cross-)compiler used to build the BIOS is not
present in many distros and would be a quite inconvenient dependency.
This is for the PC bios from bochs. Now if all bioses shipped with
qemu were built you would need some 4 cross-toolchains.

> Fabrice, can you shed
> some light on this?
>
> > I think every Qemu installation should use this Qemu BIOS, the BIOS
> > that is made for this project and not the original Bochs BIOS. Are you
> > able to fix this in Ubuntu?
>
> Debian and Ubuntu have fairly strict policies about stuff shipped in
> binary form in source packages, so unless qemu is changed to build this
> bios at build time, that's not going to happen.

Note that this code doesn't run in this form on the host Debian/Ubuntu
is on. It can well be treated as data, not code, like jpeg's shipped
in binary with a program. The data is only interpreted by this
program, but in case of an emulator the interpretation gives an
ilusion of "executing".

> I'm also not familiar with the changes in the bios.diff. Are they
> specific to qemu or could the theoretically be applied to upstream bochs
> without any ill side effects?

There are only two tiny changes, one is generic, one is qemu specific.

>
> > BTW the Ubuntu has the same problem like Windows, if I try to start a
> > image of Ubuntu with the wrong BIOS it crashes too.
>
> What do you mean exactly by "image"? Disk image + snapshot?
>
> --
> Soren Hansen
> Ubuntu Server Team
> http://www.ubuntu.com/
>
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Re: [Qemu-devel] wrong bios.bin file in Ubuntu Linux 7.10 causes blue screen on w2k guest

[Thiemo Seufer]

Soren Hansen wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 22, 2007 at 01:47:22PM -0500, Markus Schulz wrote:
> > Thank you for your response; I think the file can be found here:
> > http://cvs.savannah.nongnu.org/viewvc/qemu/pc-bios/?root=qemu
> 
> > As far as I understand Qemu uses the BIOS from the Bochs project and
> > the diff is applied for Qemu and it becomes the Qemu BIOS.
> 
> If that's really the case, I'm curious why it's distributed in its
> binary form rather than being built at runtime. Fabrice, can you shed
> some light on this?

Onerous cross-compiler dependencies.

> > I think every Qemu installation should use this Qemu BIOS, the BIOS
> > that is made for this project and not the original Bochs BIOS. Are you
> > able to fix this in Ubuntu?
> 
> Debian and Ubuntu have fairly strict policies about stuff shipped in
> binary form in source packages, so unless qemu is changed to build this
> bios at build time, that's not going to happen.

One way around that would be to build additional BIOS images which use
the qemu patches in the bochs package, provide them via an Architecture:all
data package, and then let the Qemu package depend on that data package.


Thiemo

Re: [Qemu-devel] wrong bios.bin file in Ubuntu Linux 7.10 causes blue screen on w2k guest

[Soren Hansen]

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On Fri, Nov 23, 2007 at 02:48:34PM +0100, andrzej zaborowski wrote:
> > If that's really the case, I'm curious why it's distributed in its
> > binary form rather than being built at runtime.
> build-time?

Yes, my mistake :)

> Perhaps because the (cross-)compiler used to build the BIOS is not
> present in many distros and would be a quite inconvenient dependency.
> This is for the PC bios from bochs.

That's a reasonable point. 

> Now if all bioses shipped with qemu were built you would need some 4
> cross-toolchains.

That's a good point. For us, however, the only alternative is to depend
on other packages to provide these blobs (bochsbios, vgabios,
openbios-sparc, etc).

> Note that this code doesn't run in this form on the host Debian/Ubuntu
> is on.

That does not matter much.

> It can well be treated as data, not code, like jpeg's shipped in
> binary with a program. 

The difference is that a jpeg is usually the original work and there is
no source to distribute that can be used to regenerate the jpeg.

>> I'm also not familiar with the changes in the bios.diff. Are they
>> specific to qemu or could the theoretically be applied to upstream
>> bochs without any ill side effects?
> There are only two tiny changes, one is generic, one is qemu specific.

Ok. I'll change our bochsbios build to build a specific QEMU bios with
these changes. That should make everyone happy.

I sense that any response to this e-mail would be off topic for the ml
(even this mail is borderline), so please follow-up privately.

-- 
Soren Hansen
Ubuntu Server Team
http://www.ubuntu.com/

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Re: [Qemu-devel] wrong bios.bin file in Ubuntu Linux 7.10 causes blue screen on w2k guest

[Soren Hansen]

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On Fri, Nov 23, 2007 at 02:48:34PM +0100, andrzej zaborowski wrote:
>>> As far as I understand Qemu uses the BIOS from the Bochs project and
>>> the diff is applied for Qemu and it becomes the Qemu BIOS.
>> If that's really the case, I'm curious why it's distributed in its
>> binary form rather than being built at runtime.
> build-time?  Perhaps because the (cross-)compiler used to build the
> BIOS is not present in many distros and would be a quite inconvenient
> dependency.  

I happened to discuss this with someone yesterday, and he pointed out
something even graver, that I had somehow completely overlooked. bochs
is licensed under the LGPL, so shipping a binary built from bochs
without also shipping the full source, is actually in violation of
bochs' license..

-- 
Soren Hansen
Ubuntu Server Team
http://www.ubuntu.com/

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