QEMU-Puppy 2.14-1

[ICPUG]

When QEMU-Puppy is running under a Windows XP host is it possible to use the CD-ROM drive on the host PC? If so, how? I tried the CD/DVD wizard but that just showed me the CD and DVD devices were connected to nothing. I did not know how to alter that.

Similarly, if one wanted to, could one hook into the host PC hard drive partitions, to read them at least? If so, how?

ICPUG

[Erik Veenstra]

> When QEMU-Puppy is running under a Windows XP host is it
> possible to use the CD-ROM drive on the host PC? If so, how?
> I tried the CD/DVD wizard but that just showed me the CD and
> DVD devices were connected to nothing. I did not know how to
> alter that.
>
> Similarly, if one wanted to, could one hook into the host PC
> hard drive partitions, to read them at least? If so, how?

Yes, you can. I don't know how, but you can probably find the
information in the QEMU documentation [1].

One additional note: Puppy, running within QEMU, can't access
your native hardware. All hardware Puppy sees, is emulated by
QEMU.

gegroet,
Erik V. - http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/

[1] http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/qemu-doc.html

[thegeekster]

...Similarly, if one wanted to, could one hook into the host PC hard drive partitions, to read them at least? If so, how?

ICPUG

QEMU cannot load separate partitions, per se..............Instead, you have to load the whole physical drive without the partition number, eg.,

Code: Select all

qemu -hda /dev/hda

However, the QEMU documentation recommends not doing so, unless you mount it as read-only by using the "-snapshot" option, to avoid hosing the guest OS......Snapshot mounts the drive as read-only (sort of), and writes to a temporary file:

3.6.2 Snapshot mode
If you use the option `-snapshot', all disk images are considered as read only. When sectors in written, they are written in a temporary file created in `/tmp'. You can however force the write back to the raw disk images by using the commit monitor command (or C-a s in the serial console).

HTH
---thegeekster

Edit: changed "separate hard drives" to "separate partitions"....

[thegeekster]

Hi Erik,

I just tried out your QEMU setup, but can't get it to finish booting.......It stops right after loading the kernel modules and looking for a Puppy installation......

The first time I did it, the message was it couldn't find pup_save.2fs, and not the .3fs extension..........No problem, I'll just change the extension to the one it's looking for.....

During the next boot, it stopped at the same place, complaining about not finding a "USBHDD" drive.........

The problem with that is I have an Award BIOS that doesn't identify USB pen drives as HDD, it identifies them as FDD........I have an Asus NF7-S2 mobo (not exactly the same as a NF7-S v2), which can boot an USB drive.......I know it works, cause I can boot RIPLinuX from a pen drive without any problem (instruction found here).....

I'm probably overlooking something, but I want to get this set up and running 'cause I was thinking of creating something along the same lines when I found your setup.....RIPLinux has QEMU installed, but it locks up the whole PC when I try to load my XP from the hard drive, so I wanted to see what would happen by trying out your setup......

Any pointers greatly appreciated.........I'm very well acquainted with the command line and config files, so I should have no problems following any technical advice.......

Thanx
---Cole

[ICPUG]

the geekster

Thanks for your reply concerning accessing host hard drives from QEMU. I have had a good long look at the documentation now and must start experimenting. I only want to read the drives really - to get stuff from Windows. I can write files to the USB stick.

ICPUG

[Skimmel]

I'm using QEMU-Puppy on a generic 2 gig USB flash drive on a WinXP computer. The program loads and runs just fine but once started doesn't recognize flash drive. Drives finds the CD Rom and the Hard Drives but not the USB flash drive.

I've tried editing the commandline that starts the program to include -usb and I've tried -usbdevice but neither seems to work for me.

What am I missing?

[Skimmel]

If you create a file named autorun.inf on your USB drive that contains the following:

[autorun]
OPEN=puppy.bat
ICON=linux3.ico
ACTION=Launch Puppy
LABEL=Puppy Flash Drive

when you connect your flash drive the pop up menu will include the choice "Launch Puppy." The drive will be identified as "Puppy Flash Drive" in the Windows Explorer and you'll get the picture of Tux instead of the drive icon.

[Erik Veenstra]

> I'm using QEMU-Puppy on a generic 2 gig USB flash drive on a
> WinXP computer. The program loads and runs just fine but once
> started doesn't recognize flash drive. Drives finds the CD
> Rom and the Hard Drives but not the USB flash drive.
>
> I've tried editing the commandline that starts the program to
> include -usb and I've tried -usbdevice but neither seems to
> work for me.
>
> What am I missing?

"The point"... :}

QEMU emulates a complete machine. The guest OS (the one running
within QEMU) is unaware of the native machine, nor its devices,
nor its OS.

However, it's technically possible to let the guest OS be aware
of a native USB device, but then the native USB device
shouldn't be mounted, which it is if you run QEMU-Puppy from
your pen drive.

gegroet,
Erik V. - http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/

[Skimmel]

Apparently I am missing the point.

Does this mean that if I'm running QEMU-Puppy, I can't save anything? I'd hoped to be able to ... oh say... write something using Abiword but I don't see much point if I can't save the result in a way that will last after I shutdown the emulation.

It's a pretty cool way to test drive the various distros without burning CDs but beyond that I can't much reason to bother.

[Erik Veenstra]

> Does this mean that if I'm running QEMU-Puppy, I can't save
> anything? I'd hoped to be able to ... oh say... write
> something using Abiword but I don't see much point if I can't
> save the result in a way that will last after I shutdown the
> emulation.

User data is saved in pup_save.3fs. It's described on the site
of QEMU-Puppy, on the site of Puppy-Linux and a lot of other
sites... :}

gegroet,
Erik V. - http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/

[Skimmel]

>
User data is saved in pup_save.3fs. It's described on the site
of QEMU-Puppy, on the site of Puppy-Linux and a lot of other
sites... :}

Erik,

Which brings us back to where I started. Where does it save pup_save.3fs? I would like it to save it to the flash drive I started it from so I would have no impact on the borrowed machine. But as I said when we started this conversation QEMU-Puppy doesn't seem to recognize that drive. Is there another real drive on the computer that QEMU-Puppy does recognize where I can retrieve that file?

Or maybe the question is how do I retrieve that file before the QEMU environment vanishes?

[Skimmel]

I've been trying to get QEMU-Puppy to recognize my USB flash drive as a device so I can retain the changes and settings I've made. So far I've had no luck.

DSL distributes a version bundled with QEMU and a fairly detailed set of instructions on how to set up what they call a virtual hard drive on my USB. The key seems to be using the command

qemu-img.exe create harddisk 128M

Their procedure worked like a champ. I've tried to modify the technique to work with Puppy but so far I haven't had any luck with that either. Is there something about Puppy that automatically clashes with this virtual hard drive solution?

[ICPUG]

Skimmel

If you create QEMU-Puppy as per Erik's instructions you will find on your Flash drive the file pupsave.3fs. You don't have to do any mounting - it just happens. When you running QEMU-Puppy your data files (from AbiWord etc.) will be in there if you save them to the /root directory (or below).

From Windows Explorer you can see pupsave.3fs on the root folder of the flash drive.

You cannot access the USB flash drive directly under QEMU-Puppy because QEMU-Puppy does not emulate USB by default.

ICPUG

[Skimmel]

Well, I don't know what I did wrong but I wiped it out and did it again and this time it worked as advertised. My best guess is that I got a bad download.

The lesson to be learned from this is, probably, is to do the checksum on the download.

[jannek]

You cannot access the USB flash drive directly under QEMU-Puppy because QEMU-Puppy does not emulate USB by default.

Is there a way of mounting it? I look at the /dev but did not really find my usb stick...

[ICPUG]

Jannek

As Erik said in an earlier post it is technically possible to mount a USB device in QEMU but NOT in QEMU-Puppy because it is already mounted in its own special way.

While I was researching QEMU and trying to answer these questions for myself I came across some pages that I found very useful. I reproduce the list here for other researchers:

PupWinQE, Jady's technique for Puppy with QEMU at:
http://www.freeveda.org/linux/puppy/PupWinQE.htm

Eric Hameleers' Slackware wiki at:
http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/dok ... 1171055067

Official QEMU reference document from:
http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/

Unofficial wiki at:
http://www.kidsquid.com/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/QemuOnWindows

Official source for Windows at:
http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~qemu-win/

Those sites are extra to Erik's own site of course.

Eric Hameleer's Slackware wike explains how to use USB in a generic QEMU virtual machine.

ICPUG

[robermann79]

Do you know if exist a puppy 4.xx-based version of Qemu-Puppy?
Here a sort of "porting": http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... f9f5e6184e