Chapter 10. Guest operating systems

In the past several tweaks were necessary to install a guest OS inside of Bochs. Nowadays it's almost the same as installing it on a real machine. There are only a few Bochs specific issues you should know about. Note that we cannot give you a full installation guide if you don't know how to install an OS in the real world. The following remarks apply to all guest OS installations. Some specific issues are reported in the next sections.

Now you should be able to run Bochs and start the installation process. Depending on the host cpu speed and the size of the guest OS it can take a few minutes or even some hours.

What disk images are available.
What works
Known problems

10.1. Knoppix

Contributed by Alexander Schuch.

10.1.1. Getting Knoppix

Knoppix is a live CD (700M) or live DVD (3.2G) based on Debian GNU/Linux, with lots of ready-to-run programs (web browser, office suite, a few games, and more), using KDE as desktop environment. It can be booted directly from CD, without any installation needed. You can download it from knoppix.org.

10.1.2. Preparing Bochs

As Knoppix runs completely from CD/DVD, you don't need to setup a hard disk. You just need to set up the location of the downloaded ISO image in your bochsrc, and make Bochs boot from it. Because Knoppix contains a graphical user interface, and has no other storage space but the emulated RAM, it needs at least 128MB of it, see megs option. Furthermore, you need to enable VBE support in Bochs (see Section 9.18).

10.1.3. Using Knoppix

There is nothing more to do! Just start Bochs and wait for Knoppix to load...

Note: You are logged in as normal user, if you want to become super user, just su. There is no password needed (empty password).