Re: About usage of floppy with linux guests on gnome-boxes

["Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)" <zeeshanak gnome org>]

On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 2:57 PM, Lucas Meneghel Rodrigues <lmr redhat com> wrote:
> On 12/01/2011 10:23 PM, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) wrote:
>>
>>    I have no real objections on the cdrom method if:
>>
>> 1. We already try USB and it doesn't work for some reason (I think I
>> tried with Fedora and it worked for that).
>> 2. Speed and disk usage isn't very different compared to floppy method.
>>
>>    Another reason to prefer USB is that that then the code-path won't
>> be very different for windows and linux then. Actually IIRC we just
>> need to specify in the domain configuration that its a USB image and
>> thats it.
>>
>>    BTW, it will be a big contribution if you could solve this mystery
>> for us: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=665001
>
>
> Fortunately, I know what this might be, since the first windows guest I've
> tried my initial unattended install code is windows XP 2 years ago and I've
> hit this issue.

  Oh, fortunate we are indeed. :)

> What most likely is going on here is a slight mismatch on the floppy image
> size used to hold the unattended install file. If I recall correctly, I was
> trying to provide 1.44 M to dd at the time to create the floppy.

  Oh, I would never have guessed the floppy size would be the issue
but rather the unattended file itself.

> [lmr@freedom data]$ file floppy.img
> floppy.img: x86 boot sector, mkdosfs boot message display, code offset 0x3c,
> OEM-ID " mkdosfs", sectors/cluster 4, root entries 512, sectors 4096
> (volumes <=32 MB) , Media descriptor 0xf8, sectors/FAT 3, heads 64, serial
> number 0x46d6dab4, label: "           ", FAT (12 bit)
> [lmr@freedom data]$ du -sh floppy.img
> 20K     floppy.img
>
> This certainly doesn't look like a well formed floppy,

  Yikes, I'll try creating the floppy image using the method you proposed then.

> XP standards. I see that you copy the unattended file using mcopy
>
>        debug ("Copying unattended file '%s' into floppy drive/image '%s'",
> unattended_dest_name, floppy_path);
>        // FIXME: Perhaps we should use libarchive for this?
>        string[] argv = { "mcopy", "-i", floppy_path,
>                                   unattended_tmp_path,
>                                   "::" + unattended_dest_name };
>        yield exec (argv, cancellable);
>
> So, although this seems fine at a first look, it's not good enough for WinXP
> standards :)

  I don't think mcopy does anything different than what you are doing.
I'll try first to fix the size of template/empty image first.
Hopefully that helps.

> Perhaps you guys are open to a more traditional approach like
> the one we use on our unattended code?

  The issue with mounting is permissions. Boxes need to run
unprivileged and you need to be root to mount.

-- 
Regards,

Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)
FSF member#5124