Linux on WinUAE

[gilgamesh]

You need the latest WinUAE beta with MMU support and an ISO image binary1 of Debian Sarge for m68k found here: http://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/debian-installer/
You should have access to a working Linux system, because some system tools are needed for this approach.

Installation:

1. Unpack WinUAE and mount the ISO.
2. Extract the /install folder from the ISO to a new directory named sarge/.
3. Unzip the initrd22.gz file from the sarge/install/hd-media subfolder. Mount that file via a loop device.
4. Make a new ramdisk called intrd.img of 11MB with dd and mkfs.ext2. Mount it via a loop device.
5. (As root) Copy contents from old ramdisk to new one, and add the missing modules (i.e. /lib from kernel-image-2.4.27-amiga_2.4.27-3sarge5_m68k.deb).
6. Copy the new ramdisk to sarge/install/tools/amiga/ and change the contents of StartInstall there so that it will use initrd.img.
7. Create two images iso.hdf and linux.hdf with dd and mkfs.ext2 of about 800MB, mount iso.hdf and copy the ISO into it.
8. Start WinUAE in A1200 mode, give it 128MB RAM, mount the sarge directory as HD0 and the hdf files as IDE0 and IDE1.
9. Insert WB floppy, boot, and enter "cd to dh0:/install/tools/amiga" in the shell.
10. Then enter "execute StartInstall", follow the instructions on screen.

Problems:

a2065 is not auto detected.
I've come to the point of partitioning hda. Then things either become really slow, or just crash...

[andreas]

Originally Posted by gilgamesh

You should have access to a working Linux system, because some system tools are needed for this approach.

Hang on. Which?
And is there any way out if you do NOT have access to a working Linux system, e. g. if you have Windows and you just want to run Linux on the emulator?

[eLowar]

Originally Posted by andreas

Hang on. Which?

Well he said "working", so definitely not SuSE. What kind of silly question is that?

[Edit] Wait, okay, did you mean "which tools"? then my guess would be the ones mentioned in the instructions. P.s. Still a silly question. [/Edit]

Originally Posted by andreas

And is there any way out if you do NOT have access to a working Linux system, e. g. if you have Windows and you just want to run Linux on the emulator?

Live CD (various distributions, also System Rescue CD, etc.), virtualization software (VirtualBox, VirtualPC, VMware, etc.) with Linux (pre-installed packages are available), there's probably also software to directly mount most Linux file systems into an NTFS tree. And many Linux tools (e.g. dd) are available for Windows, too, anyways.

[andreas]

Originally Posted by eLowar

[Edit] Wait, okay, did you mean "which tools"? [/Edit]

Exactly.
But my browser just crashed on auto-update (very rare!!), and that's why it took quite long until I could return here...

OK it's quite obvious once you've gotten the hang of it.

So you have to prepare everything on Windows first, and THEN just make your work "visible" for WinUAE.
For some weird reason, I had thought you could work inside the emulator but alas, since we do not have in-emulation ISO support (yet), sure thing, this has to be done "outside" the emulator zone. Yeah, admittedly, I had forgotten this bit. My bad.

Alright then...and for the tools...I almost forgot that I do have Cygwin, so this might do

Live CD (various distributions, also System Rescue CD, etc.), virtualization software (VirtualBox, VirtualPC, VMware, etc.) with Linux

Yeah, even I know that But I am NOT going to *boot* into Linux, that's why I asked I need Windows a lot at the moment, and I would need a 2nd PC to "keep" Windows running But if I can achieve everything using Cygwin as well, fine! However: the question is not as stupid as it looks! Generally speaking, there is some kernel-related stuff you CANNOT do on Cygwin but you do need a native Linux system. And I just thought about the theoretical chance I could run in such kind of problem(s) ...

[gilgamesh]

Originally Posted by eLowar

Well he said "working", so definitely not SuSE. What kind of silly question is that?

Hey, guess which distro I'm using.

Originally Posted by andreas

So you have to prepare everything on Windows first, and THEN just make your work "visible" for WinUAE.

Yes

Originally Posted by andreas

this has to be done "outside" the emulator zone.

Outside WinUAE, but you can (and probably have to) use a PC emulator like VirtualBox. Most distros (including Ubuntu) make live CDs of their system. The emulator can execute those without installation, just like eLowar said.

Originally Posted by andreas

Alright then...and for the tools...I almost forgot that I do have Cygwin, so this might do
[...]
Generally speaking, there is some kernel-related stuff you CANNOT do on Cygwin but you do need a native Linux system.

That includes mounting filesystems. If Cygwin hasn't included that recently, you'll have to use a "real" linux. You might want to have a look at VirtualBox or coLinux.

[eLowar]

Originally Posted by gilgamesh

That includes mounting filesystems. If Cygwin hasn't included that recently, you'll have to use a "real" linux. You might want to have a look at VirtualBox or coLinux.

It does not, as far as I'm aware, that's actually why I didn't mention Cygwin. Cooperative Linux is indeed an option, although I'm not sure if most people would want to install it just for this purpose (I can confirm however, that it worked very well for me when I tried it, which was quite a while back, and I'm sure it has been improved further since then). In this simple case, coLinux has no real advantage over a virtual machine, it requires just as much extra RAM and it's just as much (if you install coLinux / a virtual Linux manually) or little (if you use something like andLinux / use a pre-installed virtual Linux or a live CD within the VM) hassle as a virtual Linux.

[Edit] Okay, it does provide slightly easier access to the Windows file system if you have no clue about Linux at all and/or don't have the necessary file system support. [/Edit]

Originally Posted by andreas

[...] But I am NOT going to *boot* into Linux, [...]
[...] I need Windows a lot at the moment, and I would need a 2nd PC to "keep" Windows running [...]

Provided enough RAM (not much, actually, since you don't even need a graphical environment), you don't have to actually boot into Linux with a virtual machine (or coLinux, although I don't remember if you have to reboot once to activate the kernel module ). But do you really need to run Windows without interruption 24/7? It doesn't take long to execute the steps suggested by gilgamesh and then you can go straight back to Windows. A lot of live CDs now come with ntfs-3g (and support for other Win/DOS file systems), so it should be no real trouble with a live CD at all.

I only had a cursory look, and correct me if I'm wrong, gilgamesh, but there's no reason not to copy your created/modified files and/or switch to Windows after step 7, is there?

[Edit] Speaking of having no clue about Linux, gilgamesh, your instructions are not very friendly to non (or casual) *nix users ("mount via a loop back device", etc.). Seeing the problems you mentioned, however, I guess it won't do much good for them, anyways. So forget I said anything. [/Edit]

Originally Posted by gilgamesh

Hey, guess which distro I'm using.

My apologies. (I still don't like it, though.)

[gilgamesh]

Btw, you can get away without ever needing an extra linux. Toni has suggested how here. This method is more complicated on the UAE side, though.

And yes, you need Linux only for steps 3, 4 and 7 with my method.
The commands for steps 3,4,5 can be taken from here. Maybe a detailed howto should be written when Linux actually runs on UAE.

I would definitely suggest Ubuntu in VirtualBox. No install, No virtual HD. Files can easily be transferred between guest and host by the "guest additions".

Oh, and now I'm sure there is a bug. After partitioning is completed, processor load is 100%, HD access it null, and it won't ever stop.

[eLowar]

Just for completeness, pre-installed images (as mentioned before) can for example be obtained here: http://virtualboximages.com/

Edit: Opps... there is a free section, but apparently many aren't free (anymore? I thought I was on that site before and more/all was free). Sorry about that. But I'm sure you can get plenty of other images elsewhere.

[andreas]

Originally Posted by gilgamesh

Btw, you can get away without ever needing an extra linux. Toni has suggested how here.

Thank you very much! I do not have so much time to read each and every relevant thread I'd actually want to read

Originally Posted by eLowar

But do you really need to run Windows without interruption 24/7?

Admittedly yes, it *IS* like this on here (most of the time at least)

It doesn't take long to execute the steps suggested by gilgamesh and then you can go straight back to Windows.

Nawww, I always hate to change back and forth, period. Just me maybe, but nobody would be able to do anything about it
To a more serious note, had I already thought about upgrading my current PC, well, I wouldn't even have asked all those questions but instead figured out everything myself because I would've had *TWO* PCs at hand then. But alas, this currently is not the case.

And lastly, it doesn't bug me at all if Toni's method is deemed "complicated" on the UAE side. I have been a private UAE beta tester for a whale of a time, and I'm so doggone used to this (occasionally) awkward stuff, so things got to become real cumbersome to annoy me <grin>

[gilgamesh]

I uploaded the patched ramdisk to the zone. Maybe this helps a bit. Now you only need to get that ISO on a hdf. Affs is ok, too. Maybe you can do that with WB by mounting the hdf and a directory containing the ISO as dh0: and dh1: in WinUAE?

[andreas]

Thanks!

[gilgamesh]

Well, I started the debugger to see what's going on after partitioning. PC is in the middle of nowhere (lots of zeros mixed with some random bytes). (I wonder why it fires no traps when an illegal instructions are hit.)

My first guess would be MMU misbehavior. But how can that be verified?

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by gilgamesh

Well, I started the debugger to see what's going on after partitioning. PC is in the middle of nowhere (lots of zeros mixed with some random bytes). (I wonder why it fires no traps when an illegal instructions are hit.)

My first guess would be MMU misbehavior. But how can that be verified?

It works as "designed", debugger does not translate anything and always sees physical addresses.

Debugging hint: in these kinds of situations always compare to working condition. you would have noticed exact same behavior

You need to use debugger mmu translation commands to translate PC (logical address) to physical address and then disassemble.. Very annoying but I am not going to rewrite the debugger just for MMU..

Note that you most likely break in some unrelated kernel function anyway (like in some timer interrupt routine) which really makes OS debugging difficult.

What exactly are you doing? I am going to test network installation soon (going to mirror installation files to my LAN file/web server first)

[gilgamesh]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

What exactly are you doing? I am going to test network installation soon (going to mirror installation files to my LAN file/web server first)

That will prove a2056 is working correctly, but will probably result in the same problem.

I try to install Sarge from an ISO image on a IDE-HD. The initrd I put into the zone searches all HD for an ISO and mounts it automatically.

The installation routine works well until the partition table is written. (That step is completed. The partition table is correct afterwards.)
Then the program is suddenly very busy, but goes nowhere from that point.

[Toni Wilen]

There appears to be something wrong with IDE emulation. (syslog also shows hda errors)

btw, simply mounting the iso as IDE1 HDF in RDB mode works with your initrd (use 512 sector size also works, >512 are not supported by IDE emulation)

EDIT: IDE emulation has design flaw which was missed because AmigaOS driver is too simple

[gilgamesh]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

btw, simply mounting the iso as IDE1 HDF in RDB mode works with your initrd (use 512 sector size also works, >512 are not supported by IDE emulation)

Good. That means that andreas (or anyone) does not need a Linux host besides m68k inside WinUAE.

[KillaByte]

It should also work the way I described in one of the other Linux-related threads (netinstall only).

1. Get the Business Card ISO (because it's the smallest)
2. Extract the contents of said ISO to a folder on your HD
3. Start WinUAE and create a RDF-Image of appropriate size (I used 1GB)
4. Configure A2065 emulation in WinUAE settings
5. Add the folder to which you extracted the CD contents as HD
6. Edit (on your host OS) the file install/tools/amiga/StartInstall to use the initrd in the nativehd folder rather than the cdrom folder
7. Execute the StartInstall script

This should work however I can't get the networking stuff to function properly. The installer contacts the debian server (archive.debian.org) but can't fetch the Release file (dmesg reports timeouts).

Looks like something in my networking setup is botched - maybe someone else will have more luck. A quick Wireshark dump shows that my router is sending ARP broadcast requests for the emulated A2065 all the time but doesn't get an answer. Maybe Toni's router is using it's ARP cache more wisely

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by KillaByte

Looks like something in my networking setup is botched - maybe someone else will have more luck. A quick Wireshark dump shows that my router is sending ARP broadcast requests for the emulated A2065 all the time but doesn't get an answer. Maybe Toni's router is using it's ARP cache more wisely

Check winuaelog (preferably run winuae with -log parameter) and check that log includes same packets as wireshark log.

Log format is > or < (out or in), dst mac, src mac, packet type, length. * after a2065 means translated mac.

There is something wrong in translation if you see 00:80:10:x:y:z with wireshark (inside ARP packet. Note that this translation was broken ~week ago)

[andreas]

Originally Posted by gilgamesh

Good. That means that andreas (or anyone) does not need a Linux host besides m68k inside WinUAE.

Very good news ... thanks guys

[Toni Wilen]

winuae.zip updated, IDE emulation fixed. Unfortunately Sarge installation stopped at about 40% with following error in console 3: