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OS/2 - Technical => Setup & Installation => Topic started by: warpcafe on 2009.02.13, 00:21:24

Title: eCS as guest in VirtualBox XP2 host... success anyone?
Post by: warpcafe on 2009.02.13, 00:21:24
Heya,

I know this is not really an "eCS installation issue", however I begin to feel desperate about my failing attempts to get this to run. My corporate machine is an HP laptop with 3Gig of RAM and a DualCore something that has hardware virtualization support. The OS is XP SP2 (32-bit)
What I'm trying to do is getting eCS 2.0 RC6 to work. Previous versions are struck by the resource.sys error in VMs, older releases (OS/2 Warp 4... ecs.1) can't get across IDE and/or floppy driver load in the initial boot phase of the setup. Is there anyone here who can tell me
- which options he/she chose during setup (ACPI, dani, usb...)
- what options were selected in VirtualBox (h/w virt., acpi, io apic, ...?)
- which VB version was used

Needless to say... I gave a try to Microsofts "VirtualPC" and guess what? ecs1 ran out of the box. Crap. OK, it's dead slow but it runs. Ain't that a shame? ;) OTOH, eCS doesn't even install - but hey, it doesn't do it on VB either. I saw messages floating around randomly of people teling that they got eCS to work in VB, even Warp4.5... how the heck did they do it? Am I missing something? And why can't people explain what they did with focusing of the detailed approach and the options chosen during setup? Am I too unpatient and everything works, only you have to go for lunch in order to allow it to initialize?

The sad thing about it is that I have _NO_ spare time to work on/in/with eCS when I'm home. I don't like carrying 2 laptops with me and my company does not allow me dual-boot setups on "their" assets (which I can absolutely understand BTW). So the virtual machine is the only solution I have to do at least little things with eCS (without having to take a leave day).

Thanks for any hints.
In case I should ever be able to get it to work, I'll create a detailed how-to - that'll learn these punks on how to share information in a correct manner. Heck. :)

Cheers,
Thomas
Title: Re: eCS as guest in VirtualBox XP2 host... success anyone?
Post by: Radek on 2009.02.13, 10:40:24
I am running eCS 1.1 in the original Virtual PC - not in the Micro$oft's one. And it works greatly. No special settings, 256 MB RAM, HD 2G, well, no sound, no USB, and S3 Trio video. The network works. I can communicate with the (real) PC using a network folder. All is installed on eXtreme Problems with SP2. I know that Warp would run as well, at least W4.
Whether you succeed with the original Virtual PC depends on PAE. You have 3G of memory so that the XP can have PAE set. If it is then you should be able to install VPC but you cannot run any virtual machines. If it is not set then you should pass.
Title: Re: eCS as guest in VirtualBox XP2 host... success anyone?
Post by: abwillis on 2009.02.13, 19:27:08
I don't have personal experience so I cna just pass on the bits I've picked up.
First, make sure the virtualization support is turned on in the BIOS and hasn't been disabled.
Second, when installing eCS 2.0 RC6a (not 100% sure about RC6) choose the advanced options and there is an option to allow install in Virtual mode (don't recall the exact phrase but as I recall it is on the first page and it does say something about Virtual and is fairly obvious. 
Apart from this if there is anything needed then I haven't seen it yet.
Andy
Title: Re: eCS as guest in VirtualBox XP2 host... success anyone?
Post by: warpcafe on 2009.02.14, 00:18:07
Hi Andy,

thanks for the checkpoints! Unfortunately, this is all been done and I also played around with various ACPI parameters both in VB as well as in the eCS installer pre-menu. This really leaves me clueless as to what might be the cause...

Anyway, thanks a lot again.
Cheers,
Thomas
Title: Re: eCS as guest in VirtualBox XP2 host... success anyone?
Post by: blnelson on 2009.02.14, 02:03:14
Hello,

I have eCS RC6a running in Virtualbox 2.1.0 under both Windows XP SP3 (32-bit) and XP 64. I have the following settings in Virtualbox:
Base memory 768 MB
Video memory 32 MB
ACPI enabled
IO APIC disabled
VT-x/AMD-v enabled (for all virtualboxes, CentOS, OpenSolaris, and Windows 2000)
PAE/NX disabled
3d acceleration disabled
Shared clipboard bidirectional
IDE controller type PIIX4
Network adapter Intel PRO/1000 Desktop (Host interface adapter)
Audio disabled
Serial ports disabled
USB disabled
Shared folders none
Remote display none

One item in particular was a bit frustrating to get right during the installation: the network installation. It took several tries before I got the right combination for the network interface driver. I also had to leave changing DHCP to static IP for after the installation was done.

Hope this helps,
Bennie Nelson
Title: Re: eCS as guest in VirtualBox XP2 host... success anyone?
Post by: warpcafe on 2009.02.17, 11:29:03
Hi bennie,

Quote from: blnelson on 2009.02.14, 02:03:14
Hope this helps,
Bennie Nelson

Awesome, dude!
That really helped a lot. Not at least it gave me a support boost so I was able to find the will to retry a couple of times and finally I succeeded. It turned out, that the BIOS of my corp. machine (HP) simply had some kind of glitch or flaw.
I downloaded "securable" from GRC.com to check what tells me regarding H/W-virtualisation on that very machine. And although I chose "enabled" in the BIOS, "securable" told me it wasn't available. Even when running VBox, it remained "locked off". ( Actually, VBox appears to be able to switch it on but it didn't - more about that later). I found out that each time I saved and exited the BIOS, the setting was back to "off" after restart. I first suspected that a security thing from the corporate admins (kind of BIOS write-protection) but they assured me that it wasn't. They then google'd around that topic and told me "Try to change additional settings along with it, save them, then go back into the BIOS settings and rechange accordingly".
I thought they were kidding - but that did the trick!
Now the H/W-virt. setting remains in the BIOS. Nevertheless, "securable" tells me that it's turned off. However after simply starting the VBox GUI, when I check again with "securable" it now tells me "locked ON". And - finally eCS boot works.

The only remaining "trouble" I have is that VBox doesn't support me turning on USB support. The eCS install hangs. No problem, I simply do it without USB support and later on I'll see if I can get around that - perhaps it's only causing trouble for the install? Also, during setup, no "net use \\vbox..." works and I can't access shared folders at that time. So it unfortunately doesn't allow me to import the registration data from either a USB device nor a shared folder... looks like I'll have to modify the ISO image of eCS RC6 to incorporate the file ... will see how that works out. ;)

Anyway - thanks a ton, Bennie. Your kind of list was what I hoped for - kind of a testimonial convincing me that it can be done. Deeply appreciated.

Regards,
Thomas
Title: Re: eCS as guest in VirtualBox XP2 host... success anyone?
Post by: warpcafe on 2009.02.17, 16:46:10
Hi all,

well, tremendous success so far.
eCS RC6 (not ~a!) boots like a charm and is at unbelievable speed. To be honest, I don't see any difference so far compared to native speed. I'm writing this in Firefox from within the VM with the PCnet-FASTIII network adapter set to "NAT"... via the XP's mobile connect UMTS card. Great stuff. I'm very happy.
Now finally, eCS development has me back: I'm able to fire up the VM and resume working on my apps.

Once I have figured out to decide a blog and wiki sofwtare for my hosted websites, I'll post a detailed how-to for this stuff. In the meanwhile, I'm available for everyone who has questions in regard to eCS in VBox under XP. :)

Thanks to everyone who helped
Cheers