Nova demo with GUI

[Chris Rothrock]

In the release notes of Genode version 14.02 there is a screenshot of a GUI
environment that has two VirtualBox windows, one running TinyCore, one
running Windows 7 (https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/14.02).
How do I reproduce this example? When I run the make run/virtualbox demo
there is no GUI (until I get into one guest OS GUI, TinyCore), there is
only a text-based boot environment then the hand-off to VirtualBox in that
text environment. I need to be able to successfully boot up into that GUI
environment and demonstrate two distinct VM's are running. Any assistance
in this effort would be greatly appreciated.

[Alexander Boettcher]

Hello,

Post by Chris Rothrock
In the release notes of Genode version 14.02 there is a screenshot of a GUI
environment that has two VirtualBox windows, one running TinyCore, one
running Windows 7 (https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/14.02).

actual no - not two VirtualBox instances. As written in the text and
below the picture, it is running:

- Tinycore managed by the Seoul VMM
- and Windows 7 managed by the VirtualBox-4 VMM

on top of the micro-hypervisor NOVA.

Post by Chris Rothrock
How do I reproduce this example?

We have no ready-to-use run script for this scenario anymore, I fear.
One would have to create such a run script again (and maintain it ...).

Post by Chris Rothrock
When I run the make run/virtualbox demo
there is no GUI (until I get into one guest OS GUI, TinyCore), there is
only a text-based boot environment then the hand-off to VirtualBox in that
text environment.

The virtualbox.run script mainly exists to showcase the simplest
possible VM scenario (without [mostly] any fancy stuff - even no GUI).
We use it mainly for very tiny VMs like Tinycore ISO or Genode ISOs.

Post by Chris Rothrock
I need to be able to successfully boot up into that GUI
environment and demonstrate two distinct VM's are running. Any assistance
in this effort would be greatly appreciated.

In repos/port/run/ you may find several flavors of vbox*.run scripts,
which are executed every night on our test machines.

One specific scenario is called vbox*_multiple.run, which starts on our
test machine 6 Win7 VMs in parallel and has also some really simple GUI
setup (nitpicker - so no window manager, no decorations etc.).
However the run script is non-trivial, it expects the machine well
prepared (ahci hard disk, right partition scheme, win7 vdi names,
overlay vdi names, correct uuid of the vdis and so on and so on).

There are of course several seoul*.run scripts in reports/port/run to
start VMs via the Seoul VMM - seoul-fancy.run also contains some simple
GUI and multiple VM setup.

And as last option I have the virtualbox.run script [0] bit extended to
start 2 VBox VMMs using the same ISO image for the VMs with
nitpicker/nit_fb. I did not tested it throughly, but it comes up in Qemu
at least for me. Maybe it can serve as starting point. (set the use_gui
variable to 1 to get two VMs).

Cheers,

Alex.

[0]
https://github.com/alex-ab/genode/commit/955d9ea638437e974ebd8e058f6237b3add2f3c7

[Johannes Kliemann]

Hi Alex,

how have you built the efi files for grub2? I tried to build them from
master and from the commit you used in Genode [1].
If I run configure with --with-platform=efi some headers are missing for
the build and if I configure without it grub-mkimage fails with error:
no symbol table.

Regards,

JK

[1]:
https://github.com/alex-ab/genode/commit/de98d57a85c3b1f5fd632f1dd14f2984867fd852

[Alexander Boettcher]

Hi,

Post by Johannes Kliemann
Hi Alex,
how have you built the efi files for grub2? I tried to build them from
master and from the commit you used in Genode [1].
If I run configure with --with-platform=efi some headers are missing for
no symbol table.

below are the notes I have taken during building the grub2 efi files,
hope they are helpful.


Cheers,

Alex.



git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/grub.git grub.git
commit 972765fe8245cdf44d465329f33b5aa9ac6c2f47 (12.1.2017)

cd grub.git
./autogen.sh


export EFI_ARCH=x86_64
./configure --prefix=/home/alex/grub2/install64 --with-platform=efi
--target=${EFI_ARCH}

or

export EFI_ARCH=i386
./configure --prefix=/home/genode/grub2/install32 --with-platform=efi
--target=${EFI_ARCH}


make
make install


install64/bin/grub-mkimage -O x86_64-efi -d
install64/lib/grub/x86_64-efi -o grub2_64.efi part_msdos iso9660
part_gpt ext2 multiboot multiboot2 fat normal configfile setpci lspci
serial -p "/boot/grub"

or

install32/bin/grub-mkimage -O i386-efi -d install32/lib/grub/i386-efi -o
grub2_32.efi part_msdos iso9660 part_gpt ext2 multiboot multiboot2 fat
normal configfile setpci serial -p "/boot/grub"