Running Fedora 7 on Virtual PC 2007

(from the Hardware vs. Software 2 - this time it's personal! department)

Hi everyone,

Here's a (very) quick guide as to how I got Fedora 7 running on Virtual PC 2007. These are necessarily terse notes to myself - experienced Linux users (and Virtual PC users) will dig 'em. If there's interest in a step-by-step guide for normal (?) Linux users, I'd consider writing that as a separate blog entry.

Quick Guide/Notes:

1. I decided to perform an FTP install of Fedora, so I only downloaded ISOs for the Live CD (Fedora-7-Live-i686.iso) and the Rescue CD (F-7-i386-rescuecd.iso).
2. Virtual PC was set to use shared networking. (I'm not sure if this is a requirement or not - that's just how I did it.)
3. Booted from the Live CD and followed the instructions for an FTP install of Fedora 7.
4. You must perform a text based install. The graphics won't work by default since Virtual PC uses a 16-bit display and the installer defaults to 24-bit.
5. When you reboot after the install, use a recovery disc and get to a command prompt. You'll want to change /etc/X11/xorg.conf and switch it to 16 bit graphics:

   Section "Screen"
           Identifier "Screen0"
           Device     "Videocard0"
           DefaultDepth     16
           SubSection "Display"
                   Viewport   0 0
                   Depth     16
           EndSubSection
   EndSection

6. You'll also want to comment out the S3 driver (with a "#") and add the framebuffer driver:

   Section "Device"
           Identifier  "Videocard0"
   #       Driver      "s3"
           Driver      "fbdev"
   EndSection

7. Next, we need to start the kernel with extra parameters. This starts the kernel in framebuffer mode, fixes mouse support, adds mouse wheel and fixes a clock issue. I did this by editing the kernel entry in /boot/grub/grub.conf as follows (split into three lines for browser compatibility on the main blog page):
   

   kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7 ro
   root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet vga=791
   i8042.noloop psmouse.proto=imps clock=pit

1. The vga=791 selects 1024x768 screen and 16 bpp. You can set the pixel resolution to whatever you like by putting in the appropriate VESA value, however, for Virtual PC 2007, you must pick a 16 bpp mode. There's a handy list of them here at Wikipedia.
2. The i8042.noloop fixes the mouse issue (i.e. PS2 mice that the emulator creates don't work with some kernels)
3. The psmouse.proto=imps gets the mouse wheel working.
4. The clock=pit fixes a clock issue


8. Finally, I had to edit /etc/inittab to switch to X11 graphical boot instead of a text boot. Look for this line, and change the "3" to a "5" as follows:
   

   id:5:initdefault:

9. That's it!

Regular Virtual PC 2007 and Fedora 7 usage I leave as an exercise for the reader. *grin*

Update: Here are a few more notes that might prove useful.

1. When you set time zone, be sure to indicate that the System Clock does *not* use UTC. Otherwise, you will find that your Fedora clock is off by a number of hours, depending on how many time zones you are away from UTC. If you set this by mistake, you can change it later in the GUI by selecting System-->Preferences-->System-->Date & Time.
2. You may be able to use the graphic installer after all. When you boot the installer, use "Tab" to edit the command line, and try adding "vesa i8042.noloop psmouse.proto=imps clock=pit" after the "vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img". I'm testing this now, and will update my blog notes accordingly.

Cheers,
Paul