Weblog entry #115 for ajt
See all weblog entries made by ajt.
#115
Qemu in Lenny
Posted by ajt on Tue 13 Nov 2007 at 12:40
After my weekend adventures with VirtualBox (VB) I had another go with Qemu. I set up a qcow2 file and installed NT4 into a no-acpi qemu session. I have an iso file with all the important patches and programs at hand, so patching to SP6a and IE6 was a matter of minutes. Sound, video and networking worked perfectly out of the box.
I restarted the qemu session as a kqemu session and it booted up perfectly. When idling didn't take up much CPU load on the host system - comparable to a VB session.
I found two problems.
The mouse pointer appears as a white square in NT4 when running in the standard SDL window or via a VPN session. This didn't use to be the case, but it is now, changing the pointer icon family improves it, but there is still a problem with displaying some pointer icons. Annoying but still usable.
The second problem was when the mouse pointer goes mad, whizzing all over the screen, forcing me to reset the VM session. Most of the time it's okay for a while but if you use the system in a VM long enough it usually happens eventually.
Both problems occurred with my previous Qemu/NT4 session and the new one I created. I'm not sure where the problems lie (SDL/Qemu/client), but they are a pain. At some point in the past I had neither problem with NT4 on Qemu, so something has changed over time but I don't know what...
I also got to the bottom of my kqemu problems. kqemu isn't supported by all client systems (e.g. Windows 98 isn't) and on some you need to be careful how you install them (e.g. Windows 2K) and override the defaults.
Feeling partially flushed with success, I cleaned up my directory of virtual filesystems and tried to get sound working in my VB/NT4 system - without any success! With no sound in NT4 on VB I decided it was time to go to bed.
I restarted the qemu session as a kqemu session and it booted up perfectly. When idling didn't take up much CPU load on the host system - comparable to a VB session.
I found two problems.
The mouse pointer appears as a white square in NT4 when running in the standard SDL window or via a VPN session. This didn't use to be the case, but it is now, changing the pointer icon family improves it, but there is still a problem with displaying some pointer icons. Annoying but still usable.
The second problem was when the mouse pointer goes mad, whizzing all over the screen, forcing me to reset the VM session. Most of the time it's okay for a while but if you use the system in a VM long enough it usually happens eventually.
Both problems occurred with my previous Qemu/NT4 session and the new one I created. I'm not sure where the problems lie (SDL/Qemu/client), but they are a pain. At some point in the past I had neither problem with NT4 on Qemu, so something has changed over time but I don't know what...
I also got to the bottom of my kqemu problems. kqemu isn't supported by all client systems (e.g. Windows 98 isn't) and on some you need to be careful how you install them (e.g. Windows 2K) and override the defaults.
Feeling partially flushed with success, I cleaned up my directory of virtual filesystems and tried to get sound working in my VB/NT4 system - without any success! With no sound in NT4 on VB I decided it was time to go to bed.
Comments on this Entry
Posted by Anonymous (86.3.xx.xx) on Sat 31 May 2008 at 15:21
Interesting indeed. I had similar fun with NT4/QEMU which you may find interesting here: http://www.ilande.co.uk/index.php?/categories/2-Blog.
ATB,
Mark.
ATB,
Mark.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Bang on with exactly the same problem!
I'll have to give your graphics driver a try out as a solution. I hadn't thought of using a 3rd party graphics driver for NT4 to fix the mouse but I've seen people suggest the same driver in the past for Win98 to get a usable colour and resolution combination.
I don't know if I can be bothered enough with the mouse problem, as it involves messing about and I now mostly use VirtualBox as my VM of choice.
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
I'll have to give your graphics driver a try out as a solution. I hadn't thought of using a 3rd party graphics driver for NT4 to fix the mouse but I've seen people suggest the same driver in the past for Win98 to get a usable colour and resolution combination.
I don't know if I can be bothered enough with the mouse problem, as it involves messing about and I now mostly use VirtualBox as my VM of choice.
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]