[Qemu-devel] Re: Using Qemu to install Linux in a Windows XP

[Brett Bonfield <pacella@gmail.com>]

> Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 15:13:55 -0500
> From: Garth Dahlstrom <ironstorm@gmail.com >
> Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] Using Qemu to install Linux in a Windows XP
> To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org 
> Message-ID: <76bfb9d204111312131fc5c31e@mail.gmail.com >
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> 
> > Brett Bonfield wrote:
> > With QemuInstall-20041111 I get:
> >
> > qemu:  could not load PC bios './bios.bin'
> 
> If the windows QEMU doesn't run that is undoubtly my bad, as I'm wrote
> the menu for it...
> 
> It seems after some investigation that there were a number of bugs...
> 
> I just made a new version (v20041113) of QEMUMenu available at my site
> http://stacktrace.org/ 

How will we know when the new version has been incorporated into
QemuInstall-2004xxxx.exe?

> Fixed:
>     * -L parameter had a trailing slash, which caused QEMU to fail silently
>     * -L parameter was not quoted meaning default location in \Program
> files\  would not be passed as a single parameter, so QEMU would fail
>     * Preferences were not being retrieved correctly because working
> directory was being changed .bat file location after preferences were
> retrieved but before they were saved
> 
> Enhancements:
>     * Added search for *.dat as additional image files so QEMUMenu
> picks up Zitu's make-a-file program images
> 
> Drop it into C:\Program Files\Qemu (or where ever you installed to)
> 
> Let me know if that fixes everything up...

I ask the above just because I figure someone else may have beaten me to it :^)

Also, would you consider making QEMUMenu.bat work with "dd for Win32"
as well as it works with Zitu's program. dd for Win32 is available
here: http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite/dd.htm

The advantage it has over mkqemuimage.exe is that it can make any size
images, at least so far as I can tell. The logic John Newbigin emailed
goes as follows:

- - -

"The requirement is to create a big empty file which can be presented as 
a harddisk.  Under linux I would do this like this:
dd if=/dev/zero of=myfile.img bs=1024k count=3000
This will give you 3000Meg.

The file will be 'initialised' with \000s.  It is possible to create a 
sparse file which is 'hollow' and will be allocated when you write to 
it.  That can cause problems with some programs though so it is best to 
avoid that unless you know it works.

Windows does not share the philosophy which makes that kind of command 
possible.

Under windows, sparse files are not supported so we can use the dd tool 
in a different way.  If you write anything to a large offset (say 3Gig) 
then all the space before that will be allocated.

Pick a file which you can read and is larger than 1024 bytes and try 
this command:
dd if=filethatalreadyexists of=newfile.img bs=1k seek=3071999 count=1
here seek is the offset into the newfile to start the writing.  The 
number I am using = 1024 * 3000 - 1 which will give you 3000Meg again."

- - -

Thanks,

Brett