Installing Banyan VINES 8.5 on VMware, Bochs or QEMU

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vmlemon

Installing Banyan VINES 8.5 on VMware, Bochs or QEMU

Post by vmlemon »

Hi, has anyone attempted to install Banyan VINES 8.5 (a System V UNIX-based networking OS) on VMware, Bochs or QEMU? I have managed to get it to install on both QEMU and VMware. However, after initial installation, it coredumps and drops into a debugging session. The install media will not boot on Bochs properly due to unsupported BIOS calls.
Thank you.

RentedMule
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Post by RentedMule »

Can you paste the core dump (screen shot)? Believe it or not, I can make sense of these things.

vmlemon

Post by vmlemon »

The exact same problem occurs on innotek VirtualBox. I don't have VMware Workstation installed at the moment, so here's the VirtualBox version:
Image

RentedMule
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Post by RentedMule »

The whole panic comes from the "cannot mount root" message. This OS either doesn't support a the virtual disk controllers/drives, or there is something wrong with your image.

vmlemon

Post by vmlemon »

Thanks. I doubt there is anything I can do now, seeing as Banyan went under a long time ago, and there don't seem to be any drivers available for the virtualisation software's emulated drive controllers available anywhere (unless I'm not looking in the right place, which I doubt now).

RentedMule
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Post by RentedMule »

With most UNIX's there is generally a way to force the use of the BIOS to access disks.

Also, try this: http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files ... 14_56.html

vmlemon

Post by vmlemon »

I've had a look at the link, but it turns out to be a BIOS/firmware upgrade for older Compaq/HP machines. Not sure how much the Banyan System V deviates from the "original" one, but I'll have a look to see if there's a way to force it into BIOS disk access mode. Interestingly, it may be doing that at install time, since it's able to write the VINES OS onto the disk image in the first place, but there's obviously something that's absent/broken that the OS supposedly doesn't need after installation time (just a guess).

vmlemon

Post by vmlemon »

I finally got it working (almost), except for a slight problem towards the end, which I have been unable to solve. I have written a how-to on installing it, based on what I've managed to figure out. It turns out to be an LBA and BIOS disk cylinder size issue. I will be making the how-to available to anyone who wants it.

drscriptt
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Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2017 3:41 am

Re: Installing Banyan VINES 8.5 on VMware, Bochs or QEMU

Post by drscriptt »

I recently got Banyan VINES 8.5 to install and run in VirtualBox.

I posted details to the VirtualBox forums.

Link - Banyan VINES 8.5 boots and runs in VB 5.1.36
- https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=88063

The only thing is I don't have any of the codes needed to activate features. :-(

But VINES is up and running, I can get to admin panels, and poke around at things.

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