[vbox-dev] Linux VHD Boot available - download and boot your physical pc, also runs as vm

[François Revol]

Hi,

Le Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:38:12 -0700 (PDT), Huihong Luo a écrit :
> For your information, we used VirtualBox disk source code to make 
> Linux 
> VHD boot possible. Source code will be provided later after more 
> cleanup, 
> and with VDI/VMDK support added.
>  
> A sample Ubuntu VHD package is ready for download:
>  
> http://www.vmlite.com/index.php/download/22-appliances
>  (free site registration required)
>  
> download, extract it, then double click setup.exe on Windows, reboot
>  
> detailed instructions:
>  
> http://www.vmlite.com/appliances/ubuntu-910-readme.html
>  
> screenshot:
>  
> http://www.vmlite.com/images/vboot/vboot-grub2.png
>  
> VMLite Team


Interesting, sounds quite much like what BeOS was doing with their 
IMAGE.BE trick, except it was using hardcoded name to find the image 
(BEOS/IMAGE.BE in fat and ext2 partitions) and it was more specific ;)

I think Haiku <http://haiku-os.org/> could easily support this as well.
Our bootloader supports getting args from multiboot info though it 
doesn't use them yet. And I started to write the code to support the 
IMAGE.BE scheme as well but didn't finish, I'll have a look at 
supporting this some day.
(Our kernel currently requires using our own bootloader though our 
loader but it can easily be chained from grub.)
cf.
http://dev.haiku-os.org/browser/haiku/trunk/src/system/boot/loader

If I had time I'd propose helping with testing on the Mac as well but 
I'm too busy :p

François.
-- 
BeOS did it 15 years ago!