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Topic: General QEMU Questions, Custom specs, saving of data...

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Telanis Blackwood Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 6
Joined: July 2006

Posted: July 27 2006,17:47

First, I'll assert the fact that I'm a complete newbie when it comes to Linux. I just got DSL installed last night (somewhere between 11 and midnight) on my older computer, and have DSL embedded for this one.

I'm not big on command lines; setting all those parameters gets to be a headache after a while. When I run QEMU for DSL, I notice it sets up a lot of things for the virtual machine, and I'm wondering what the process is to change that, like giving more virtual HD space or ram/processor speed and such. What parameters am I setting to get the specs I want but still be able to runDSL embedded?

The other question, also pertaining to embedded, is whether or not it actually saves all of your data on "shutdown". DSL says it backs up to /mnt/hda2, but I don't know if that's a virtual hda2 from the QEMU sandbox, or if it's actually backing up to an actual hda2, which probably refers to my main partition of XP (it's probably hda2 because of a dell recovery partition at the front of the drive).
So when DSL backs up from QEMU, where is that info being saved. Basically, if I copied the whole embedded folder to by USB drive (which isn't bootable), will it save everything from session to session?

Sorry for a long post, I tend to do that.

Telanis Blackwood Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 6
Joined: July 2006

Posted: July 28 2006,02:54

Sorry for the double post, but I should clarify some discoveries I've made in the last few hours since posting.

Yes, did notice that Qemu saves to the pseudo-hard drive in its folder, which is nice. And looking hard at the command line sort of gave me a clue as to what goes on. So now my question is this:

How do I get MyDSL into DSL-embedded without a connection to the Internet? Or, how do I get files from outside the Qemu DSL into DSL?

I did download a few packages directly from the ibiblio mirror in windows, but now I want to know how to get them into DSL-embedded. I've tried my Creative Zen Micro's removable drive feature, but DSL doesn't recognize it ("you must specify a file system" ok, how?), and the CD drive listed is obviously a sandbox for Qemu. So how do I do file transfer between normal OS and DSL-embedded???

Again, sorry for the double post, and the long post, and generally trying to be as helpful and informative of a noob as possible.

roberts

Group: Members
Posts: 4983
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: July 28 2006,03:05

Most of your questions are Qemu questions and not really DSL.
The Qemu site will provide you with more Qemu related tools. Such as to make more and larger virtual hard drives. Your latest questions is really "how can Windows mount and use a Qemu virtual hard drive?"
Might I suggest the Qemu support forums. Personally, I had made a larger second hard drive image and then while in Qemu/DSL, downloaded and save the extensions to the new larger virtual hard drive. Then added mydsl=hdx to autoload them at boot time.

Telanis Blackwood Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 6
Joined: July 2006

Posted: July 28 2006,03:09

K, one final question before heading off to the Qemu support: mydsl=hdx is part of a boot options, yes? Elsewhere in the command line, qemu points to folders in the whole DSL directory. This possible with the mydsl?

Thanks for the help. (rtfm, rtfm, rtfm *bashes head against wall* rtfm, rtfm...)

roberts

Group: Members
Posts: 4983
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: July 28 2006,04:44

I am not too sure of your question.
I will say that DSL is consistent in its approach whether it is Qemu's sandbox or native boot. And that being...
MyDSL extensions are large and static and therefore are separated from the backup/restore procedure. Therefore on the command line the boot option mydsl=hdxy will point to the drive partition or virtual harddrive in the case of Qemu where these large static files are located. DSL's backup/restore procedure is for everything else and is driven by two files. .filetool.lst and .xfiletool.lst The first is a list of files/directories to backup and the second is which files to exclude from the backup. The backup/restore device can be specified by the boot option restore=hdxy. In the case of Qemu, it is in the windows.bat file in the append section, restore=hdb

I want to say also, that I am not trying to push you off to some other qroup. There are at least two other regular users of DSL who are quite sharp with the latest in Qemu use. With each new release of Qemu there seems to be more advanced features. In fact, if you may end up using a newer version of Qemu depending on your needs.

I, on the otherhand, am not a Windows guy, and therefore not much of a Qemu guy either. I did set up the linkages from DSL to Qemu's sandbox in a fashion which tries to be consistent as described above.

6 replies since July 27 2006,17:47

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