[SoaS] Another way to use VirtualBox and SoaS on a Mac

[Dave Bauer]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 3:33 PM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:

> Hey Dave,
>
> On 21 Dec 2009, at 16:03, Dave Bauer wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com
> >wrote:
> >
> >> Hi folks,
> >>
> >> Just thought I'd bounce another possible approach pass the list for
> using a
> >> regular Soas loaded USB stick on Mac OS X, this one has the obvious
> benefit
> >> of allowing you to use the same USB stick on different
> machines/locations.
> >> Now, VirtualBox's BIOS does not support booting from a USB stick
> >> unfortunately, but as it turns out there are some hidden ways to make
> >> VirtualBox boot what the documentation refers to as "raw disks" rather
> than
> >> regular VM disk images (Page 135 in the VB manual, 9.10 Using a raw host
> >> hard disk from a guest).
> >>
> >> *** Caviate lector, the USB stick I'm using does not seem to be saving
> >> changes between uses, I'm not sure if this is an issue with the stick I
> >> made, or this approach ***
> >>
> >> Here's the steps:
> >>
> >> 1) Plug in your soas-2-blueberry USB stick
> >>
> >> 2) In a terminal type:
> >>
> >>       df
> >>
> >> You should see a line that says something like the below, make a note of
> >> the /dev/disk1 it may be different on your Mac depending what hardware
> you
> >> have:
> >>
> >>       /dev/disk1       1206080   1206080         0   100%
> >> /Volumes/soas-2-blueberry
> >>
> >> 3) Mac OS X must not auto mount the USB. If it does you can't create the
> >> needed vmdk to reference it (you'll get an "VERR_DEV_IO_ERROR"), and the
> >> documentation warns of potential file corruption if you allow both a
> host
> >> and guest OS to tinker with the same raw disk at the same time. The
> rather
> >> naughty trick is to go edit your fstab to prevent the specific stick
> from
> >> auto-mounting [I hope to find a non techy replacement for this step]:
> >>
> >>       sudo vim /etc/fstab
> >>
> >> ...and append the line:
> >>
> >>       LABEL=soas-2-blueberry none cd9660 ro,noauto 0 0
> >>
> >> 4) Now make sure to eject the USB volume from your desktop; unplug your
> >> soas-2-blueberry USB stick; plug it back in again to check. It should
> _NOT_
> >> appear on your desktop this time.
> >>
> >> 5) In Terminal run the below VirtualBox command, modifying the .vmdk
> save
> >> location, and your /dev/disk1 as needed. This will create a tiny little
> vmdk
> >> file that holds the description of the USB stick, and register it with
> the
> >> VB media manager so it's available as a disk:
> >>
> >>       VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename
> >> /Users/gary/Desktop/soas-2-blueberry.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk1 -register
> >>
> >> 6) In VirtualBox create and configure a VM as normal, you should see the
> >> soas-2-blueberry.vmdk listed as an available existing disk.
> >>
> >> 7) All done, time to boot...
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >> --Gary
> >>
> >> P.S. There's another way of getting VirtualBox to boot the USB stick on
> the
> >> Mac, but I'll give it a couple of tries before reporting back here.
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> SoaS mailing list
> >> SoaS at lists.sugarlabs.org
> >> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas
> >
> > Gary,
> >
> > There is an easier way!
>
> That's what I like to hear! :-)
>
> > I have created a Virtualbox VM that is basically the boot helper CD on a
> > very small virtualbox disk. This is programmed to look for the device
> named
> > FEDORA for boot.
>
> Fab, can you point me to where I can download it (have been
> digging/searching without luck)? I was hoping the official USB Boot CD image
> would work for this, it does boot up, but then can't get at the USB and
> complains it has no root.
>
> > 1) Plug in USB
> > 2) Open Finder. Eject USB.
> > 3) Start Virtualbox VM
> > 4) Click Devices Menu, Click USB Devices, select the USB stick.
>
> Can you avoid step 2 and step 4 by configuring the VM settings and adding
> the USB stick (under the "Ports" settings you can add a filter for a
> specific stick)? When the VM starts it will automatically grab the filtered
> stick, un-mounting it from the host, and mounting it on the guest – same as
> fiddling with the USB Devices pop-up, but without the fiddling :)
>
>
You could but that assumes you always use the same stick and don't reflash
it etc.  My technique is more flexible, but trickier since it should work on
any  SoaS usb.

I am using the command line interface to detect which usb is connected and
get the uuid which is different every time you plug in the stick, even the
same one, and connect it.

I have to go find the VM and the applescript and I'll post the URLs.

Dave


> > I tried to write an Applescript to automate ejecting and connecting the
> USB
> > to the Virtualbox and ti works reliably on my Macbook but we had trouble
> > testing on other Macs.
>
> Happy to give it a test here if needed.
>
> Regards,
> --Gary
>
>


-- 
Dave Bauer
dave at solutiongrove.com
http://www.solutiongrove.com
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