BOCHS-TOOLS
Bochs-Tools are a collection of scripts and programs to be used together with the Bochs-emulator (see http://bochs.sourceforge.net). Main goal was to provide a more Unix-like interface to the emulator and to enable access to Bochs disk-images from outside of Bochs. With Bochs-Tools, it is very simple to clone an existing OS-installation to a Bochs-image (as long as Linux has write-access to the relevant file-system).
The tools were developed under Linux. They might also work on other operating-systems. Feedback on this issue is appreciated.
SYNOPSIS
For a detailed usage-example, see below section EXAMPLE.
bxtactivate : Activate a partition of a disk-image
bxtclone : The all-in-one create, copy, lilo script
bxtcopy : Copy a directory-tree to a disk-image partition
bxtcreate : Create a partitioned disk-image. Only primary partitions
are currently supported.
bxtdd : Dump data to and from a partition of disk-image
bxtlilo : Install lilo on the disk-image
bxtmkfs : Create a filesystem on a disk-image partition. Supported
filesystem-types: swap, minix, ext2, ext3, reiserfs, fat, fat32
bxtmount : Mount a disk-image partition
bxtptinfo : Outputs information about a disk-image bxtsettype : Set the partition-type of a partition of a disk-image bxtsfdisk : Run sfdisk on a disk-image
bxtstart : Start the emulator. Floppy and disk-images are passed
on the commandline using Unix-compliant options. The
geometry and size of the floppy and disk-images is autodetected.
bxtfuncs.inc : (shared functions, internally used)
The bxt*-scripts also work with images created with bximage and which were partitioned within the emulator. They also support images created with dd as described in the "old" Bochs-documentation.
The Bochs-Tools need sfdisk in the PATH, sfdisk is part of the util-linux-package and normally installed on every Linux-system.
INSTALLATION
The following steps are only necessary if you did not install the rpm-package.
Unpack the Bochs-Tools archive (something like bochs-tools-1.6.0.tar.bz2) and run "make install" as root.
# tar -xvjf bochs-tools-1.6.0.tar.bz2 -C /tmp
# cd /tmp/bochs-tools-1.6.0
# make install PREFIX=foo
PREFIX defaults to /usr/local. All executables will go into the PREFIX/bin-directory, man-pages go to PREFIX/man/man1
DOCUMENTATION
Man-pages are available. Every script/program supports the option "-h" for runtime-help. And you have the sources!
EXAMPLE: Cloning an existing Linux-distribution
Let's assume we have installed the Debian bootstrap installation of Woody on /dev/sdb3 (about 110MB). We want to put this distribution on a disk-image and start the emulator afterwards. The disk-image should have two partitions, one for the distribution and a second for swap-space (128MB).
# bxtcreate -1 200m -2 128m hda.img # create the image
# bxtmkfs -t ext2 hda.img:1 # make ext2-fs on first partition # bxtmkfs -t swap hda.img:2 # make swap-space on second partition # mount /dev/sdb3 /mnt # mount Woody-installation # bxtcopy /mnt hda.img:1 # copy Woody-tree to first partition # umount /mnt # umount source # bxtmount hda.img:1 /mnt # mount first partition (the copy!) # vi /mnt/etc/fstab # change mountpoint of / to /dev/hda1 # and swap to /dev/hda2 # ln -fs hdc /mnt/dev/cdrom # make sure that /dev/cdrom points to # /dev/hdc # umount /mnt # bxtlilo hda.img # install the lilo boot-loader # bxtstart -b disk -1 hda.img # start the emulator and boot from disk
The given procedure is much much faster than installing within the emulator! It is probably not a good idea to use the disk-image from within Bochs and from outside at the same time (although I haven't tested that).
With the new bxtclone-script, things are even much simpler. If you don't need fined-grained control, you can just use these commands:
# mount /dev/sdb3 /mnt # mount Woody-installation # bxtclone /mnt hda.img # create, copy, lilo, ... # umount /mnt # bxtstart -b disk -1 hda.img # start the emulator and boot from disk
bxtclone has a number of options to control partition-sizes, see the man-page for details.
DOS/WINDOWS considerations
The above procedure can also be used to clone a DOS/Windows (exept NT and XP) installation. If you create a pure DOS/Windows Bochs-image, you also need to activate the first partition of your image and install the boot-code.
To do this, run "bxtactivate hda.img:1". Then boot the emulator with an appropriate rescue-disk and run "sys c:". Note that the rescue-disk created from within Windows98 does not contain sys.com by default, you have to copy it from c:\windows\command\sys.com.
Dual-boot DOS/Windows and Linux
The script bxtlilo will add a DOS/Windows partition to the boot-menu, if it is on a partition before the Linux-partition (e.g. DOS: hda1, Linux: hda2, swap: hda3). In this case, you only have to add the boot-code with "sys c:" as described above, you do not have to activate the DOS/Windows partition.
Additional notes
If lilo complains "Sorry, don't know how to handle device 0x0701", you should upgrade lilo to a more recent version. Note: the version of lilo shipped with Red-Hat 8 is definitely too old!
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"bxtcopy srcdir hda.img:1" is a shortcut for:
# bxtmount hda.img:1 /tmp/mnt
# tar -cpf - -C srcdir . | tar -xpf - -C /tmp/mnt
# umount /tmp/mnt
(In fact, bxtmount uses a temporary directory created with mktemp instead of /tmp/mnt).
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"bxtptinfo -b hda.img" outputs the geometry suitable for your bochsrc-file.
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Due to a bug in Bochs up to 2.0.1, ata-definitions can't be changed from the commandline. If you use bxtstart, you should comment out the definitions for ata0-master, ata0-slave and ata1-master. These are set automatically by bxtstart. There are two advantages of bxtstart compared against the standard commandline interface of Bochs: geometry and size are autodetected, and you can use filename-completion.
LICENSING ISSUES
Bochs-Tools are placed under the GPL version 2, see file COPYING.
SUPPORT
If you think you found a bug or want to contribute some code please drop me a note. Include as much information as necessary (and possible). Be aware that I only check my mail once or twice a week, so be patient.
Bernhard Bablok
mail@bablokb.de
http://www.bablokb.de