Xathrya Sabertooth

Testing ReactOS Using Preloaded VirtualBox Disk Image
Testing ReactOS Using Preloaded QEMU Disk Image
Mounting QEMU Hard Disk Image on Various Operating System
Installing ReactOS on QEMU
Installing ReactOS on VirtualBox

Testing ReactOS Using Preloaded VirtualBox Disk Image

Posted: 31 Jul 2013 10:51 PM PDT

If previous article we discuss about installing ReactOS on VirtualBox from scratch, this time we will discuss about how to use preloaded ReactOS on VirtualBox. As proof of concept, I use:

Slackware64 14.0 as host
VirtualBox 4.2.6

I might using Linux for this article, but the preloaded archive itself is made specially for Windows.

Obtaining the Materials

As said, we will do installation of ReactOS on virtual machine using VirtualBox. Thus you have to make sure VirtualBox is installed and enable to run properly. For Slackware64, I have create a separated article about how to install VirtualBox on Slackware.

The main material we need is the ReactOS ISO itself. Go to http://reactos.org/, ReactOS’ official site. The latest version is 0.3.15 which is still in alpha version (not feature-complete and is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes). ReactOS team provide three way to taste ReactOS, which are: Installation CD in iso format, Live CD, and preloaded image file. As our concern is installation ReactOS to VirtualBox, choose the Preloaded with VirtualBox. Upon finish downloading, extract the content which you will get a directory named ReactOS-0.3.15-VBox. We will refer this iso as ROSdir

On the Directory

Go to ROSdir and let’s inspect what are inside. If you want to skip this section, go to next section for actual testing.

There are three items on the root: Readme.txt, ReactOS.vmdk, and ReactOS.vbox.

The ReactOS.vmdk is virtual disk format originally used by VMware. But yes, VirtualBox can use it too.

ReactOS.vbox is the VirtualBox’s file for referencing the virtual machine. In this project we have following specification:

Type: Microsoft Windows XP
RAM 512MB
Network adapter is connected using NAT
ReactOS disk is 226MB of 10GB available (dynamic)

Boot and Testing

Back to ROSdir.

Double click the project file, there you should open Oracle and see a new Virtual Machine installed. However this is not in my case. VirtualBox failed to open virtual machine, it cannot register the DVD image for VBoxGuestAdditions.iso because it is already exists.

Uh oh!

If you face similar problem, then navigate to File -> Virtual Media Manager. There you should see a dialog. Click on tab optical disks. Remove it. Don’t worry the disk won’t be deleted. Then you can double-click again the .vbox file.

Just start the VM, we are done! Seriously

Testing ReactOS Using Preloaded QEMU Disk Image

Posted: 31 Jul 2013 07:48 PM PDT

If previous article we discuss about installing ReactOS on QEMU from scratch, this time we will discuss about how to use preloaded ReactOS on QEMU. As proof of concept, I use:

Slackware64 14.0 as host
QEMU 1.4.0

I might using Linux for this article, but the preloaded archive itself is made specially for Windows.

Obtaining the Materials

As said, we will do installation of ReactOS on virtual machine using QEMU. Thus you have to make sure QEMU is installed and enable to run properly. For Slackware64, I have create a separated article about how to install QEMU on Slackware.

The main material we need is the ReactOS ISO itself. Go to http://reactos.org/, ReactOS’ official site. The latest version is 0.3.15 which is still in alpha version (not feature-complete and is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes). ReactOS team provide three way to taste ReactOS, which are: Installation CD in iso format, Live CD, and preloaded image file. As our concern is installation ReactOS to QEMU, choose the Preloaded with QEMU. Upon finish downloading, extract the content which you will get a directory named ReactOS-0.3.15-QEMU. We will refer this iso as ROSdir

On the Directory

Go to ROSdir and let’s inspect what are inside. If you want to skip this section, go to next section for actual testing.

There are three items on the root: Readme.txt, boot.bat, and directory files. Basically this is specially prepared for Windows. The boot.bat is Windows batch script to invoke QEMU. All the materials are inside files directory. Go to files and here we see bunch of files. Basically these are all the materials.

There are some interesting files there:

bios.bin: the PC BIOS which is used by QEMU to emulate x86_64 machine
pxe-ne2k_pci.bin: Ethernet driver
vgabios-cirrus.bin: driver for VGA
SDL.dll: Dynamic Link Library (DLL) for SDL. This is used by QEMU.
qemu.exe: the QEMU itself.
qemu-img.exe: QEMU tools for manipulating disk image.

Boot and Testing

Back to ROSdir.

Now on our working directory, let’s invoke following command to spawn qemu.

  qemu-system-i386 -m 256 -hda files/ReactOS.vmdk -net nic,model=ne2k_pci -net user -serial file:files/ReactOS.log

Notice the “.” on the command. Here we get some arguments.

-m 256 means we give 512MB of RAM. If you got plenty of RAM available and don’t mind share some, you can set this value higher.
-hda files/ReactOS.vmdk: ReactOS team provide us with vmdk file, which is VMware virtual disk format
-net nic,model=ne2k_pci: We will make use of networking using pxe-ne2k_pci driver
-serial file:files/ReactOS.log will log and catch debug message emitted by QEMU. Valid arguments to -serial include file names, pipes, COM ports, etc.

If the above command failed with following error: qemu-system-i386: Can’t open BIOS image bios.bin

Then you should find where bios.bin stored. Invoke following command to search it.

  locate bios.bin

Let’s say it is on /usr/local/share/qemu/bios.bin, then invoke this to start up the qemu:

  qemu-system-i386 -m 256 -cdrom ReactOS.iso -hda ReactOS.img -boot d -localtime \  -serial file:ReactOS.log -bios /usr/local/share/qemu/bios.bin

If you want to set the sound, go on and set emulation to AC97. To do that, add -soundhw ac97 as argument when calling qemu. You should also install drivers later. Alternatively, you can set the emulation to ES1370 using -soundhw es1370 instead of ac97 one.

Now, here is the screenshot:

Mounting QEMU Hard Disk Image on Various Operating System

Posted: 31 Jul 2013 07:17 PM PDT

Testing and debugging an operating system require an environment. Many people prefer to use emulator and virtualization software like QEMU, VMware, or VirtualBox for this job. However, testing a software build for that OS which run on top of virtualization require a method to copy files between host and the guest system. Software such as VirtualBox and VMware have a feature which enable user to activate shared directory. However not every operating system can do this because this feature act as device driver or kernel module. Moreover, QEMU doesn’t have this. The best and practical way to copy file on QEMU is copy all files into .iso images which is accessible by internet. Another way is mount the virtual hard disk or the disk image, which we will do in this article.

As the title suggested, we will discuss the way in various host operating system. Therefore, materials I use are:

Slackware64 14.0 (Linux)
Windows 7 32 bit (Windows)
QEMU 1.4.0

In Linux

Most linux distribution allow virtual disk mounting using mount command. The disk image should be mounted into a specific directory, let’s say /media/MyOS. Most of the operation need root privilege, so acquire root privilege before we do.

  mkdir /media/MyOS

Make sure your virtual image file is in RAW format. If you think your disk image is in another format, use following command:

  qemu-img convert <image-file> -O raw <image-file.raw>

Mounting the disk image is simple thing, as simple as mounting another storage device. Note that the actual partition start from offset 32256, after some structure on the disk such as MBR, partition table, etc. The following example assume you are using FAT as file system.

  mount -o loop,offset=32256 <image-file> /media/MyOS -t vfat

To unmount is even easier.

  umount /media/MyOS

In Windows

Basically, Windows doesn’t provide such powerful tools like Linux does. However, we can always use third party’s software. Like in Linux section, in this section our goal is to mount raw images.

OSFMount

OSFMount allow local disk image mounting in Windows with a drive letter (E:/, F:/, G:/, etc). You can download OSFMount here.

P2 eXplorer

Another tool which can be downloaded here. Note that it is not free product, but you can always use the demo version.

Installing ReactOS on QEMU

Posted: 31 Jul 2013 12:40 PM PDT

If previous article we discuss about installing ReactOS on VirtualBox, this time we will discuss about how to install ReactOS on QEMU. As proof of concept, I use:

Slackware64 14.0 as host
QEMU 1.4.0.
ReactOS iso file

Here we don’t use image preloaded with ReactOS but rather install it from iso. If you prefer to use the preloaded version, direct yourself here.

Obtaining the Materials

The main material we need is the ReactOS ISO itself. Go to http://reactos.org/, ReactOS’ official site. The latest version is 0.3.15 which is still in alpha version (not feature-complete and is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes). ReactOS team provide three way to taste ReactOS, which are: Installation CD in iso format, Live CD, and preloaded image file. As our concern is installation ReactOS to VirtualBox, choose the Installation CD. There you should download approximately 64MB zip archived iso file. Upon finish downloading, extract the iso. We will refer this iso as ReactOS.iso

Create the Virtual Machine

It would be great if you create a working directory specially made for this purpose. Let’s call it ReactOS under your home directory. Therefore, we will have ~/ReactOS.

ReactOS will be installed to a dedicated drive image. We will refer it as ReactOS.img. Approximately, 1000MB space at minimum is sufficient. We will make use of QEMU to create an image for us.

  qemu-img create ReactOS.img 1000M

If you plan to install some application to try under ReactOS, greater space is recommended.

Now on our working directory, let’s invoke following command to spawn qemu.

  qemu-system-i386 -m 256 -cdrom ReactOS.iso -hda ReactOS.img -boot d -localtime -serial file:ReactOS.log

Notice the “.” on the command. Here we get some arguments.

-m 256 means we give 512MB of RAM. If you got plenty of RAM available and don’t mind share some, you can set this value higher.
-cdrom ReactOS.iso will create a cd rom drive to the virtual machine with ReactOS.iso loaded.
-boot d instructs QEMU to boot from the CD-ROM.
-localtime means the QEMU VM will use time provided by the host.
-serial file:ReactOS.log will log and catch debug message emitted by QEMU. Valid arguments to -serial include file names, pipes, COM ports, etc.

If the above command failed with following error: qemu-system-i386: Can’t open BIOS image bios.bin

Then you should find where bios.bin stored. Invoke following command to search it.

  locate bios.bin

Let’s say it is on /usr/local/share/qemu/bios.bin, then invoke this to start up the qemu:

  qemu-system-i386 -m 256 -cdrom ReactOS.iso -hda ReactOS.img -boot d -localtime \  -serial file:ReactOS.log -bios /usr/local/share/qemu/bios.bin

If you need network connection, go add -net nic,model=ne2k_pci and -net user switches when calling qemu.

Boot and Install

Run the virtual machine. Choose your preferred language.

Proceed by ENTER until you are face with this screen:

Here we are brought back to the era of Windows XP.

At this time, we have to partitioning our disk. Our disk is still raw, no partition. To create a partition, press C. Let’s pretend we want to use all of our disk space. Here we got only 1 partition, C:, unformatted. Press Enter to select it.

Now, ReactOS support FAT as file system and no NTFS. The surprising part is, ReactOS supporting EXT2 filesystem. However on my first attempt (July 31, 2013) ReactOS won’t be installed if the partition is Ext2, stuck on copying acpi.sys file. So let’s choose FAT. Press Enter again when they ask for confirmation. And you will get following screen:

If Windows is installed on \windows, ReactOS will have similar behavior. But instead of static pathname, ReactOS can be installed on any path. However at this time, let’s call it ReactOS. Then it will copying some files.

Because we are installing on Virtual Machine, install the bootloader as well.

Reboot!

When the machine boots, it will automatically run the ReactOS Setup Wizard. Acknowledge the license and click Next to continue with Setup.

Type your name and organization. Then give the computer a name. You are also asked an administrator password. The password, at this point, is optional. You can also change the system locale settings if you want or change the keyboard layout if you want. Next change the date and time if you need to, as well as the timezone.

Once more reboot, and your ReactOS has been installed. Cheer! Here is a screenshot I pick.

PS: I don’t know why the graphic isn’t good as VirtualBox earlier. But I will investigate further

Installing ReactOS on VirtualBox

Posted: 31 Jul 2013 04:11 AM PDT

In this article, we will discuss about ReactOS installation on VirtualBox. For this, I use:

Slackware64 14.0 as host, although any Operating System is fine at least it can run VirtualBox
VirtualBox 4.2.16.
ReactOS iso file

Obtaining the Materials

The main material we need is the ReactOS ISO itself. Go to http://reactos.org/, ReactOS’ official site. The latest version is 0.3.15 which is still in alpha version (not feature-complete and is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes). ReactOS team provide three way to taste ReactOS, which are: Installation CD in iso format, Live CD, and preloaded image file. As our concern is installation ReactOS to VirtualBox, choose the Installation CD. There you should download approximately 64MB zip archived iso file. Upon finish downloading, extract the iso. We will refer this iso as ReactOS.iso

Create the Virtual Machine

Now come to the main business. ReactOS 0.3.15 is much more like Windows 98 and Windows XP. Therefore it should not burden your resource too much. Create a new machine for ReactOS with this (minimum) specification:

Machine Name: “ReactOS” (or anyname you want)
Machine Type: “Microsoft Windows”
Machine Version: “Windows XP”
Memory: 256 MB (but I use 1024 MB)
Hard disk: 10 GB

Other setting on my Virtual Machine:

Networking:
- Type: NAT
- Adaptor: “Intel Pro/1000 MT Desktop (8254EM)”
Audio: Intel AC’97
Storage Layout:
- IDE Controller: CD Device, Hard Disk
Video Memory: 16 MB

Boot and Install

Run the virtual machine, you should then see something similar to this:

Choose your preferred language. Just press ENTER until you are face with this screen:

Here we are brought back to the era of Windows XP.

Now, ReactOS support FAT as file system and no NTFS. The surprising part is, ReactOS supporting EXT2 filesystem. However on my first attempt (July 31, 2013) ReactOS won’t be installed if the partition is Ext2, stuck on copying acpi.sys file. so let’s choose FAT. Press Enter again when they ask for confirmation. And you will get following screen:

If Windows is installed on \windows, ReactOS will have similar behavior. But instead of static pathname, ReactOS can be installed on any path. However at this time, let’s call it ReactOS.

Then it will copying some files.

Because we are installing on Virtual Machine, install the bootloader as well.

Reboot! But don’t detach the ISO image from the virtual machine. You will be asked following operating system to boot (similar to GRUB or any other bootloader). Just choose ReactOS.