Boot ISO with Bochs - MicroHowto [Was: Re: [Linux-bruxelles] Re:booter depuis une iso sur HD]

[Carlos Betancourt]

Certainly Bochs is the Free Software solution for you. I personally use
VMware, but that's just because I'm lazy.

But you opened my apetite for challenge, so I downloaded Bochs and
tested it for you. And got it working!

The good news is that you can, indeed, boot your Knoppix bootable iso
image from Bochs.
The bad news is that I didn't get yet to XWindows, (lack of time and
further interest) but certainly I can see the boot screen, and the
penguin boot logo.

So, you'll have to do the rest of the home work ;)

If using debian:
pundit# apt-get install bochs bochsbios bximage
pundit# bochconf
<You need to run bochsconf first, so it will create a default .bochsrc
for you; it will ask you to create a virtual disk image for bochs. Use a
small number, like 64 (MB). You don't care about a virtual disk, you
just want to test your iso image>

Edit the .bochsrc (in your home) and add (comment out other ata0-slave
lines):
ata0-slave: type=cdrom, path=/download/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX_V3.3-2003-11-19-EN.iso, status=inserted

You can also boot a real cdrom like this:
ata0-slave: type=cdrom, path=/dev/cdrom, status=inserted

Search the "BOOT" section and make sure that "boot: cdrom" is the only
one (or the first one, like in the BIOS):

Then, just run "bochs" from the command line.
(ignore the errors about serial or parallel port, just press "continue".
or delete them from the .bochsrc file)

Voila! Have fun!

For more info:
http://bochs.sourceforge.net/doc/docbook/user/x1220.html#AEN1270
http://bochs.sourceforge.net/doc/docbook/user/x2608.html#AEN2610

Hope it helps,

Carlos