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OpenBSD 3.5 on SIMH/Vax
Another obsolete topic…
Like the previous version(s), OpenBSD 3.5 will run with a kernel patch to /sys/arch/vax/mscp/mscp_disk.c. This patch, a pre-compiled generic kernel, and (soon) a prebuilt disk image can be found in the downloads section.
Here is the patch to /sys/arch/vax/mscp/mscp_disk.c:
Click to read MORE...Posted by markus on Sunday, June 13, 2004
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OpenBSD 3.4 and SIMH
Obsolete…
I have a driver patch that appears to fix the problem with the root filesystem on an MSCP disk. I still feel that I’m missing something obvious, but for better or worse, here it is.
Here is the patch to /sys/arch/vax/mscp/mscp_disk.c:
Click to read MORE...Posted by markus on Thursday, February 26, 2004
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SIMH/Vax versus OpenBSD 3.3
This article is obsolete, there’s a much simpler solution involving a parameter in the SIMH config file.
Can somebody shed some light on how to get OpenBSD 3.3/vax to run flawlessly on simh? The initial install to disk goes well according to the Vax installation instructions, but the (generic) kernel that boots off the disk can’t mount the root filesystem. Since this problem can be worked around by debugging output in the kernel, it’s almost certainly an issue of a lost interrupt due to emulation timing issues. See below for details.
I’m using the following simh config file:
Posted by markus on Monday, October 06, 2003
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Porting swup to Redhat 7.3
This article is outdated. Swup is an rpm-based alternative to Debian’s apt, used in the Trustix Secure Linux distribution. I haven’t followed what TSL is up to, but chances are that swup is still in use today. However, there are more widely used options for rpm-based distributions, like apt-rpm or yum. Furthermore, the swup Sourceforge project set up by the TSL developers way back when seems to have abandoned a few years ago.
The swup (software updater) package is roughly equivalent to Debian’s apt (advanced packaging tool). Swup allows for automatic software updates, while satisfying package dependencies and verifying the integrity of the packages and meta-information by means of a cryptographic signature. Since I’m primarily using RedHat 7.3 and Trustix, it makes more sense to port swup to RedHat than to port apt to both distributions.
Swup is written in Python and ports very easily. The related rdfgen package that creates the RDF repositories requires but a short patch to address some intrinsic capabilities of RPM 4.0.4 that ships with Redhat 7.3.
Running swup is trivial ("swup --upgrade") and the rest of the article describes how to set up a repository for RedHat. The repository is a web or ftp archive of package files and meta-information. While Trustix uses the i586 architecture for all architecture-dependent packages, RedHat uses i386/i586/i686/athlon for the actual kernel packages and i386/i686 for a few select application packages. Unless all RedHat boxes using a repository share the same architecture, it’s probably best to create separate meta-information for each architecture. The specifics are a matter of individual preference, but here is a sample layout that works for me:
(read more below the fold)
Click to read MORE...Posted by markus on Thursday, September 18, 2003
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Virtual Disk Conversion
Converting virtual disks between VMware, Virtual PC, bochs, and any
other emulators is always an interesting problem. If the disk
structures are known or can be reverse engineered, it’s possible to
write a conversion utility. A much more generic way uses your favorite
floppy-based or run-on-CD Linux version (like Knoppix) and a network
connection for each real or virtual machine.
Assuming you’ve booted a small-footprint Linux on
either machine (real or virtual) and there is network connectivity
between them, you can transfer a disk image with a simple command pipe
like:
source# dd if=/dev/hda | ssh user@target dd of=/dev/hda
where source and target are the source and target (V)Ms and user is the remote account on the target host. For this to work, you’ll either have to allow ssh root logins or grant user
write permissions to /dev/hda. It’s not pretty either way, but we’re
not talking about making dangerous permanent changes on a production
box.
If you find that you do this a lot, there are certainly ways to
automate this procedure. It’s also possible to copy the images to a
central file server. Another possible improvement would be a transfer
protocol that transfers a sparse image, i.e. it skips disk sectors that
are zeroed out.
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Shared Virtual Reference Disks
The article below is outdated. Recent versions of VMware workstations fully support this feature.
I often create large numbers of disposable lab VMs by cloning reference disks. While it is straightforward to copy disk images, this method is time-consuming and can use up a lot disk space. For WMware 3.x, there is an advanced tech tip that describes how a reference disk can be shared between multiple VMs running concurrently. What follows is an adaption of this procedure for VMware Workstation 4.x.
Click to read MORE...Posted by markus on Thursday, August 28, 2003
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