OSDev.org

On my laptop, I'm running openSUSE 11. And because my floppy drive doesn't work I was thinking of testing and debugging my OS using virtualbox. It works really well with oses such as haiku (http://www.haiku-os.org). But I can't even get a "virtual" grub booting floppy to work . I've followed the tutorial on Loopback_Device and that didn't work, I also followed that tutorial and in /mnt/myfloppy and ran
# dd if=stage1 of=/dev/loop0 bs=512 count=1
# dd if=stage2 of=/dev/loop0 bs=512 seek=1
but all i got when i "virtualised" it is i got "GRUB" printed on the screen for as long as I kept the virtual machine running.

Can someone help me create a virtual floppy.
A virtual machine is the only type of machine my OS is ever going to see.

Thanks in advanced

Hi,
havent seen a nix box in ages ........

however try appending conv = notrunc to the dd commands

Regards
Shrek

Or grab a precompiled GRUB floppy image.

Personally, I find it much easier to just create a bootable ISO image than to mess with making bootable floppies. WIth bootable ISO images you don't have to worry about mounting a loopback device or esoteric options to the dd command. Making a bootable ISO image is rather easy even on the command line, and every GUI application I've ever used (such as Nero or whatever) supports it as well.

There's even a tutorial on the wiki that describes just how to do this. See Bootable_El-Torito_CD_with_GRUB_Legacy.

Thanks for the tip, I'm going to start right away.

Hope it works.

Oh and do you like the name of my new OS. It's simplicity in welsh.

Thanks quok

If possible use Bochs. Its easy to configure. You can also make use of an ISO which boots easier.

unplygOS wrote:Oh and do you like the name of my new OS. It's simplicity in welsh.

It reads like unplugOS (unplugged as in guitar play, or terminology from the Matrix) Whether that's a good association or not is debatable.