Hi,
I tried to install QNX 4.25 ( 2011 CD ) in VirtualBox 4.2.* ( 4.2.6 recently ), Win7 64bit host. Installation
always failed during autodetecting hardware phase ( window of QNX Installer 2011 disappeared from screen ). I found
solution:
run installation in diagnostic mode / F12
deselect PCI BIOS, SCSI controllers, network cards (ethernet, arcnet, token ring, … )
With these settings QNX installation was successfull.
Just want to ask: is there any option in virtual machine which can cause smooth installation of QNX?
( i used default HW settings of virtual machine, disable audio, use INTEL PRO/1000 T Server network card )
We can install and run QNX 4.25 as a Guest OS on Windows XP Pro SP3 32bit Host machine - in ORACLE VirtualBox 5.0.16.
We can add physical FDD drive to the QNX4 VM. We can see fd0 in /dev in QNX4. We can launch Fsys.floppy &. We can mount /dev/fd0 /fd0.
But we are not able to read the QNX floppy disk’s files (floppy is OK - we can read the files in physical PC with QNX 4.25 installed).
Are there some special parameters to launch Fsys.floppy & or some VirtualBox parameters to be able to read QNX Filesystem from physical floppies inserted into physical FDD drive of the Host XP machine?
I don’t know if you can do it directly. You might be able to get Windows to create a disk image (using Win32 Disk Imager for example) and then mount the image in VirtualBox, rather than the actual drive.
That would mean that there is no way to read physical diskettes directly from Physical FDD drive installed in Host Windows computer from VirtualBox Guest OSs that are non-Windows?
Linux Guest VMs installed in VirtualBox on Windows Host (physical) machine cannot read Linux-filesystem physical floppies inserted into physical FDD of Windows machine too?
What would then be the reason of existience of “Storage - FDD” in VirtualBox Configuration? Only for Windows/DOS Guest on Windows Host?
I don’t know if that’s generally true or not. I have no Windows systems with floppy drives to try it on. But I think the issue is not the guest OS, but that the Windows host can’t read the filesystem. If the disk is DOS-formated / FAT16, your guest OS should be able to read it. I believe this is also true of other storage devices, including USB.
I believe that the guest OS can read only a disk that the host OS can read. It’s just that Windows is limited to a very few filesystems. Also, it’s useful for mounting disk images, which the host OS does have to be able to read. I have used floppy images in my QNX4 guest without issue. I didn’t create them in Windows, however. I used dd on a QNX box, then transferred the image via USB to my Windows machine. I believe Linux dd will also work. Actually, for that matter Linux has support for the QNX4 filesystem read-only, assuming your kernel has it.
Thank you very much ingraham - your answers are not only of high level of experience but also written very well - even for non-native-english speaking person.
One more question in this thread: QNX4 + Photon installed in ORACLE VM VirtualBox 5. PS/2 mouse is not functioning properly in Photon (while moving the mouse, various popups are opening as if I were clicking mouse buttons or so).
In QNX text console after launching “inputtrap start” the same PS/2 mouse works OK.
Are there some special parameters in VirtualBox configuration or in QNX4 etc/config/trap/input.[node] to fix this problem or…?