Re: Building grub2 for use as a kernel on qemu

[Andrei Borzenkov]

03.02.2017 21:23, Shaun Reitan пишет:
> Ya, that’s where i originally started with this was building a bios
> (actually started with coreboot + grub2) but the issue i found was that
> grub doesn't seam to be able to see the disks.  It can if i run the qemu
> system using full virt with harddrive emulation but if i try and use
> virtio for better performance the disk is just missing.  I'm guessing
> grub probably needs virtio drivers simular to what was done with xen.
> 

Yes, unfortunately qemu port currently does not support virtio devices.

> At this point i'm a bit lost as to what i should try next.  Sounds like
> i386-pc built at a kernel is probably the best solution however i need
> to figure out how to build an image that can search and load a
> configfile from the disk.  grub-mkstandalone says the image is too
> large, i'm not sure how to strip it down.
> 

--fonts= --locales= --themes= --install-modules="..."

This will omit all fonts, locales and themes and only add to memory disk
modules you explicitly listed. I used it successfully more than once on
i386-pc.

> So then, should i be using grub-mkimage with a memdisk that has another
> grub config?  So i'd build the kernel with a configfile
> (memdisk)/boot/grub/grub.cfg and inside that grub.cfg it would do the
> searching?  Would i be in normal mode then?  I'm going to attempt to
> test this out now, i just wanted to shoot off this email just in-case
> your still up since it seams like were on opposite ends of the world :)
> 
> -- 
> Shaun
> 
> 
> 
> ------ Original Message ------
> From: "Andrei Borzenkov" <address@hidden>
> To: "Shaun Reitan" <address@hidden>; "address@hidden"
> <address@hidden>
> Sent: 2017-02-02 07:15:41 PM
> Subject: Re: Building grub2 for use as a kernel on qemu
> 
>> 02.02.2017 22:30, Shaun Reitan пишет:
>>>  I guess the question is, should i be using i386-qemu?  For kicks i just
>>>  built a image using
>>>
>>>  ./grub-mkstandalone -O i386-qemu -o grub2.img boot/grub/grub.cfg -d
>>>  grub-core
>>>
>>>  and qemu will use it, however when i connect to the VNC console all i
>>>  see is a bunch of colorful giberish.
>>>
>>
>> QEMU platform is intended to run on "bare metal" replacing BIOS, i.e.
>>
>> qemu-system-x86_64 -bios grub2.img
>>
>> You will need to include at_keyboard in image to get console input.
>>
>>
>>>  --
>>>  Shaun
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  ------ Original Message ------
>>>  From: "Andrei Borzenkov" <address@hidden>
>>>  To: "Shaun Reitan" <address@hidden>; "address@hidden"
>>>  <address@hidden>
>>>  Sent: 2017-02-02 12:01:58 AM
>>>  Subject: Re: Building grub2 for use as a kernel on qemu
>>>
>>>>  On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 6:25 AM, Andrei Borzenkov <address@hidden>
>>>>  wrote:
>>>>  ...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>   grub-mkimage -O i386-pc -c grub.cfg -o grub2.img at_keyboard
>>>>>>  configfile
>>>>>>   biosdisk ext2 linux serial halt minicmd terminal all_video cat echo
>>>>>>  gzio
>>>>>>   search linux16 normal disk test true fat memdisk tar ls sleep -p
>>>>>>   /usr/src/grub/grub-core/
>>>>>>
>>>>  ...
>>>>>
>>>>>   Use grub-mkstandalone to create image that includes internal memory
>>>>>  disk
>>>>>   and place your config on this memory disk. Do not include your
>>>>> modules
>>>>>   in image itself. By default grub-mkstandalone adds all available
>>>>>   modules; if size is an issue (but this is really a couple of
>>>>> megabytes,
>>>>>   so I do not expect it), you can restrict module list and other
>>>>>   components - see help output.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  Sorry, missed that you use i386-pc platform, not i386-qemu. Then size
>>>>  of boot image does matter, you may want to at least exclude themes and
>>>>  translations (if any). Full standalone image that includes all bells
>>>>  and whistles for GUI boot does not fit in available memory on this
>>>>  platform.
>>>>
>>>>  _______________________________________________
>>>>  Help-grub mailing list
>>>>  address@hidden
>>>>  https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-grub
>>>
>>
>