How to set up an OS image to work with Argos

1. Requirements

To set up an operating system to use with Argos, you will need the following:

The orinal QEMU package from the official website (http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/)
A CD/DVD or a CD/DVD ISO image including the OS you want to install
You could optionally use QEMU's kernel accelerator for Linux to speed up the installation process, which you can also get from the official website. Note that the installation of some OSes might fail when using the accelerator (see http://www.claunia.com/qemu/ for supported guest OSes information)
Up to 3 GB of free disk space depending on the operating system you are trying to install
You might need network connectivity, if you are attempting to install an OS from the network (see Argos network set up)
The SDL development libraries and headers. Binary packages are available for most Linux distributions. If one is not available for your system you download and build the library yourself. (http://www.libsdl.org)

2. Install QEMU

Extract the souce code package qemu-0.8.2.tar.gz:

/download/directory$ tar zxvf qemu-0.8.2.tar.gz

[OPTIONAL] Move the Qemu kernel accelerator into `/download/directory/qemu-0.8.2/' and extract it :

/download/directory/$ mv kqemu-1.3.0pre9.tar.gz qemu-0.8.2/.
/download/directory/$ cd qemu-0.8.2/
/download/directory/qemu-0.8.2$ tar zxvf kqemu-1.3.0pre9.tar.gz

Configure Qemu:

/download/directory/qemu-0.8.2$ ./configure --target-list="i386-softmmu"

Build Qemu by running `make'
```
/download/directory/qemu-0.8.2$ make
```
[OPTIONAL] Build the kernel accelerator by running `make' within the kqemu-1.3.0pre9 directory:
```
/download/directory/qemu-0.8.2/kqemu-1.3.0pre9$ make
```

Become root and install QEMU:

/download/directory/qemu-0.8.2$ make install

[OPTIONAL] Become root and install KQEMU:

/download/directory/qemu-0.8.2/kqemu-1.3.0pre9$ ./install.sh

Consult Qemu's compilation from sources and kernel accelerator documentation in case of problems.

3. Create a virtual hard disk image

Qemu provides the utility `qemu-img' for this purpose. The following example creates a 3 gigabytes hard disk image named `IMAGE' using Qemu's copy-on-write format:

qemu-img -f qcow IMAGE 3G

For more information on how to create a disk image consult Qemu's documentation on on disk images.

4. Installing a guest OS

In the following examples `NNN' corresponds to the amount of virtual RAM (in megabytes) that Qemu will be run with.

Also `-localtime' is optional. It sets Qemu's clock to local time instead of UTC.

From a CD/DVD ROM

Assuming that the CD-ROM device at the host can be found under `/dev/cdrom', and `IMAGE' is a disk image created using qemu-img, run Qemu as such:

qemu -cdrom /dev/cdrom -hda IMAGE -boot d -m NNN -localtime

Make sure that you have permissions to read `/dev/cdrom' before trying to run the above command.

From an ISO image

Similarly, if `ISOIMAGE.iso' is the ISO image containing the OS you wish to install and `IMAGE' is a disk image created using qemu-img, run Qemu as such:

qemu -cdrom /path/to/iso/images/ISOIMAGE.iso -hda IMAGE -boot d -m NNN -localtime

OS specifics

All OSes
Argos works with physical addresses. Unfortunatelly, this means that it cannot track virtual memory, and that you will have to disable virtual memory at the guest OS. In Linux, do not create (or activate) a swap partition during installation. In Windows you can disable paging after the installation completes.
All Windows OSes
A Windows operating system installed using the previous versions of Argos (earlier than 0.2.0), cannot be booted using the latest version (0.2.0). The reason behind this being that versions 0.2.0 and later emulated and different IDE driver, and as a result Windows installations based on older versions do not contain the appropriate driver.
Windows 2000
When installing Windows 2000 you will have to enable the following option `-win2k-hack'. This is to overcome a Windows 2000 bug during installation, which causes a disk full problem. When the installation completes you do not need this option any more.
Windows XP
Some Windows XP versions install correctly but a security error when booting:
```
A problem is preventing Windows from accurately checking the
license for this computer. Error code: 0x800703e6.
```
The only solution for now is to install Windows XP Service Pack 2.
It is also possible that the installation procedure might freeze, so we strongly recommend that you also use the `-win2k-hack' even when installing Windows XP.

5. Post-installation

After installing and configuring the guest OS to your liking remove the `-cdrom ...' and `boot d' options when running Qemu or Argos.

We recommend that you use the `-snapshot' option, which forces Qemu and Argos to open the disk image as read-only, writing all changes to temporary files. This way you do not risk corrupting the disk image.

September 2006, Georgios Portokalidis