Attempting to run Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) using VirtualBox, KVM, and QEMU

In an effort to help with testing the beta release of Ubuntu 8.04 I wanted to set up a number of virtual machines running the OS so I could perform various tests, such as whether certain but in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) had been fixed. Unfortunately I have not been successful so far. As every system save 1 is running the amd64 architecture that is the architecture I would prefer to test. However, it seems that trying to have a virtual amd64 guest on an amd64 host using open source software is problematic.

VirtualBox

VirtualBox has no 64-bit guest support. This is disappointing as I believe VirtualBox to be one of the easiest virtualization tools available. Unfortunately without 64-bit guest support I don’t see much of a future for it.

KVM

The version of KVM in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) can run Ubuntu 8.04 Server but cannot run Ubuntu 8.04 Desktop, either the installer or the OS. If running with no parameters KVM displays nothing after “Kernel alive message”, when the system switches to graphics mode. When using the “-std-vga” option there is some garbled output but still nothing usable.

QEMU

Specifically the command used is “qemu-system-x86_64” in order to emulate a 64-bit system. When trying to run Ubuntu 8.04 Desktop with no parameters this actually shows the Ubuntu splash screen and then hangs displaying a non-blinking cursor. In order to diagnose what had happened I then chose recovery mode from the Grub menu. After some time the system would drop into a BusyBox shell with an error that the disk “does not exist”. This same error is present when trying to run Ubuntu 8.04 Server and may be related to a bug where the linux-ubuntu-modules package was not required.

Plan

I can use KVM to boot my Ubuntu 8.04 Server image, update the kernel which should install linux-ubuntu-modules. I will also make sure that both the server and generic kernels are installed. I can then copy that image and install ubuntu-desktop and see if that fixes the issues with QEMU.

Alternatively I can use KVM to boot the Ubuntu 8.04 Desktop image into recovery mode and install the generic kernel, the kernel modules, and perform updates.

Update

Well neither of the above options had any effect on my progress but then I came across a helpful post on Ubuntu Forums: Qemu problem with Gutsy. This post suggests that the problem is with the version of the bochsbios package that is present in Ubuntu 7.10. The solution is to replace it with a more recent version from Debian. Here’s what I did:

• wget http://http.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/b/bochs/bochsbios_2.3.6-2_all.deb
• sudo dpkg -i bochsbios_2.3.6-2_all.deb

And with that qemu-system-x86_64 worked, albeit in a painfully slow manner. This had no effect on the KVM issues.