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

["andrzej zaborowski" <balrogg@gmail.com>]

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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