Installing 386BSD on BOCHS
This is the procedure that was used to install 386 BSD onto a patched version of the Bochs IA-32 emulator. This is based on ancient FAQs and trial & error. It is assumed you use a modern Linux with a kernel that features the ip_tables packet filter and TUN/TAP as host OS. If you want to use a different platform you can still follow the tutorial as a guideline but you are on your own figuring out how to get the emulator networked. A good starting point is http://bochs.sourceforge.net/doc/docbook/user/bochsrc.html#AEN1831
Special attention has been given to the ability to run the emulator in a terminal and in the background.
Watch out for leading spaces if you copy/paste anything from the boxes below, they tend to break here-documents.
Contents
Requirements
You will need the following to get a 386BSD system patched and installed:
- A modern Linux system with iptables
- A working copy of gunzip
- An http/ftp client like wget
- An acceptable C compiler like gcc to compile Bochs
- The curses/ncurses library for Bochs to simulate a monitor in a terminal
- An ftp server for the distribution files
On a stock Basic Fedora Core 8 box you have these in no time with
yum -y install wget yum -y install gcc yum -y install gcc-c++ yum -y install ncurses-devel yum -y install vsftpd
We will get to this later in the tutorial, but for those attempting to install on a different platform or those using this tutorial as a guide, you also need:
- The Bochs 2.4.2 sources
- A patched pic.cc
- The 386BSD distribution and patchkits
You can download the Bochs sources from sourceforge
A patched pic.cc can be found at
The 386BSD 0.1 distribution and patchkits can be found at
Preparing for installation
Get, patch, configure and compile Bochs
The Tiny 386BSD boot floppy does something odd. It writes 0x02 to port 20h of the emulated PIC. This causes Bochs to panic. The patch enables Bochs to continue in CLI mode. The available windows binary for Bochs comes up with a msgbox. The patch is included in more recent versions of Bochs.
Pasting into Bochs is a drag. Playing with BX_KBD_ELEMENTS in iodev/keyboard.h here and keyboard_paste_delay later on in the Bochs configuration can help, but YMMV.
cd /usr/local/src
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/bochs/bochs/2.4.2/bochs-2.4.2.tar.gz
gunzip -c bochs-2.4.2.tar.gz |tar -xvf -
wget http://www.xs4all.nl/~dugo/pic.cc
mv -f pic.cc ./bochs-2.4.2/iodev/pic.cc
cd bochs-2.4.2
./configure --enable-cpu-level=3 \
--enable-ne2000 \
--with-term \
--with-nogui \
--enable-all-optimizations \
--enable-docbook=no
make && make install
Get and serve the 386BSD distribution and patches
During installation the 386BSD distribution files and patches can be fetched with ftp. To facilitate this set up an anon ftpd that serves up the files. It should be possible to obtain these directly from minnie during install, but there are two problems. From the looks of it Warren Toomey never intended minnie to be a 386BSD install server. There is also a catch 22 in using the famous patchkits. Stock 386BSD 0.1 comes without gzip, the patches are gzipped, so here's your chance to get around that.
echo listen=YES >> /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf vsftpd cd /var/ftp wget -r -np ftp://minnie.tuhs.org/BSD/386bsd-0.1/ wget -r -np ftp://minnie.tuhs.org/BSD/386bsd-patchkits/ mv minnie.tuhs.org/BSD ./ rmdir ./minnie.tuhs.org cd /var/ftp/BSD/386bsd-patchkits gunzip *gz
Prepare the host for networking Bochs
To make Bochs' ne2k work without a spare NIC in your host you need to set up tunneling.
echo alias char-major-10-200 tun >>/etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf.dist depmod -a
Make a tunconfig script for bochs to fire off when the ne2k comes up. In this example 192.168.1.1 becomes the gw and you can pick an ip in 192.168.1.0/24 for the guest later.
# set up the bsd dir w/ tunconfig
cd; mkdir bsd; cd bsd
printf '#!/bin/bash\n/sbin/ifconfig ${1##/*0/} 192.168.1.1\n' >tunconfig
cat >>tunconfig <<__EOF
# carnival, put your masks on and go
/sbin/iptables -D POSTROUTING -t nat -s 192.168.1.0/24 -d ! 192.168.1.0/24 -j MASQUERADE >& /dev/null
/sbin/iptables -t nat -s 192.168.1.0/24 -d ! 192.168.1.0/24 -A POSTROUTING -j MASQUERADE
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
__EOF
chmod +x tunconfig
Note that newer iptables has a slightly different syntax. -d ! has become ! -d.
Configure Bochs
The 386BSD installation fails on a box with a lot of mem, hence the `megs: 8' stanza in the Bochs configuration.
cat >bochsrc <<__EOF config_interface: textconfig display_library: term romimage: file=/usr/local/share/bochs/BIOS-bochs-legacy cpu: count=1, ips=80000000, reset_on_triple_fault=0 megs: 8 vgaromimage: file=/usr/local/share/bochs/VGABIOS-lgpl-latest vga: extension=none floppya: 1_44=boot.img, status=inserted ata0: enabled=1, ioaddr1=0x1f0, ioaddr2=0x3f0, irq=14 ata0-master: type=disk, path="disk.img", mode=flat, cylinders=1024, heads=16, spt=63, translation=none, model=generic boot: disk, floppy floppy_bootsig_check: disabled=0 log: bochsout.txt panic: action=ask error: action=report info: action=report debug: action=ignore vga_update_interval: 400000 keyboard_serial_delay: 250 keyboard_paste_delay: 1000000 mouse: enabled=0 private_colormap: enabled=0 keyboard_mapping: enabled=0, map= i440fxsupport: enabled=0 ne2k: ioaddr=0x300, irq=9, mac=fe:fd:00:00:00:01, ethmod=tuntap, ethdev=/dev/net/tun, script=./tunconfig com1: enabled=0 __EOF
As explained in http://www.os2museum.com/wp/?p=1907 the initial kernel suffers from a Y2K bug. This can result in timestamps with the year 1970. Unfortunately the boot floppy doesn't let you work around this because it is missing the date command. If it bothers you creating new files and directories with a timestamp predating the release date you can set the time to eg. the 16th of July 1992 using bochsrc until you have the date command.
clock: time0=711244800
Once you are running with patch 00077 installed, Y2K+ bios dates shouldn't be a problem anymore.
Create Tiny 386BSD floppy
Prepare the 386BSD boot floppy to work on our emulated box that has a fancy 1.44MB floppy drive. The original floppy was intended for 1.2MB floppys, but who wants to be caught dead using these nowadays?
(cat /var/ftp/BSD/386bsd-0.1/bootable/dist.fs;dd if=/dev/zero bs=1 count=245760)>boot.img
Create a disk image
Make a disk that has the same geometry as in the configuration file, in this case 1024 cylinders, 16 heads and 63 sectors per track. This gets you about 500 megabytes, go larger and you get yourself in heaps of trouble.
printf "hd\nflat\n504\ndisk.img\n" |bximage
If that fails you probably have a very recent version of bximage, in that case:
printf "1\nhd\nflat\n504\ndisk.img\n" |bximage
First boot, Tiny 386BSD
Start up Bochs
You should now be ready to fire up bochs in your terminal and start your journey back in time.
bochs -q -f bochsrc
After a while you should get the following output:
|
Plex86/Bochs VGABios 0.6c 08 Apr 2009 NO Bochs VBE Support available! Bochs BIOS - build: 09/28/09 $Revision: 1.235 $ $Date: 2009/09/28 16:36:02 $ Options: apmbios pcibios eltorito ata0 master: generic ATA-6 Hard-Disk ( 504 MBytes) Press F12 for boot menu. Booting from Hard Disk... Boot failed: not a bootable disk Booting from Floppy... 386BSD Release 0.1 by William and Lynne Jolitz. [0.1.24 07/14/92 19:07] Copyright (c) 1989,1990,1991,1992 William F. Jolitz. All rights reserved. Based in part on work by the 386BSD User Community and the BSD Networking Software, Release 2 by UCB EECS Department. pc0<color> at 0x60 irq 1 on isa wd0 <generic> at 0x1f0 irq 14 on isa fd0 drives 0: 1.44M at 0x3f0 irq 6 drq 2 on isa ne0 ethernet address fe:fd:00:00:00:01 at 0x300 irq 9 on isa npx0 at 0xf0 irq 13 on isa changing root device to fd0a warning: no swap space present (yet) 386BSD Distribution Installation Floppy (Tiny 386BSD) Release 0.1 Please read the installation notes (type 'zmore INSTALL.NOTES') and registration information (type 'more REGISTRATION') before use. To install on hard disk drive, type 'install'. erase ^?, werase ^H, kill ^U, intr ^C # || style="background:#000000;"| |
Format drive and install the distribution utilities
At the prompt give:
(echo y; echo y)|install
This will cause the installer to format the entire drive as it sees fit and install the distribution utilities on it. When the installer is finished Tiny 386BSD and Bochs will go down gracelessly.
Second boot, Base System
=== Finish the installation.
Restart Bochs
Give another:
bochs -q -f bochsrc
..to boot the base system. After it finds the devices it will greet you with the following:
|
386BSD Base System Release 0.1 |
Write an installer
The installed 386BSD kernel keeps kprinting `startartstartart' to your screen once network is up and running. This can get on your nerves, to work around this you can write an installer in a .netrc macro.
Change the ips below, 10.0.0.1 to where your ftpd lives, 192.168.1.1 to your gw and 192.168.1.2 to the ip you want to give the guest. Change odin into the name you want to give the guest.
echo "machine 10.0.0.1" >.netrc echo "login ftp" >>.netrc echo "password news@EU.net" >>.netrc echo "macdef init" >>.netrc echo "#" >>.netrc echo "pasv" >>.netrc echo "prompt" >>.netrc echo "bin" >>.netrc echo "lcd /tmp" >>.netrc echo "cd BSD/386bsd-0.1/bindist/" >>.netrc echo "mget *" >>.netrc echo "cd ../etcdist/" >>.netrc echo "mget *" >>.netrc echo "cd ../srcdist/" >>.netrc echo "mget *" >>.netrc echo "cd ../../386bsd-patchkits" >>.netrc echo "mget *tar" >>.netrc echo "!echo odin |extract bin01" >>.netrc echo "!csh -c \"limit openfiles 512; extract src01 ; extract etc01 ; tar -cf /dist.tar /tmp/ ; cp pk023.tar /pk023.tar ; cp pk023024.tar /pk023024.tar ; sync ; sync ; sync ; /sbin/shutdown -r now\"" >>.netrc echo "quit" >>.netrc echo "#newl" >>.netrc echo "" >>.netrc chmod 400 .netrc
Configure the network
Watch out for the startarts.
ifconfig ne0 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 up route add default 192.168.1.1
Start the installation
Extract will complain with:
/tmp/install.src01: Can't open /tmp/install.src01 extract: Cannot execute installation script of distribution, failed
according to an ancient FAQ this is a joke from Jolitz. I don't get it.
Extract (or cat) also opens more files than the base sh can handle in case you were wondering about the use of csh.
ftp 10.0.0.1
When the macro is finished Bochs will go down gracelessly.
Third boot, fsck
When you restart Bochs again with:
bochs -q -f bochsrc
386BSD will boot, fsck the disk and shut down again. Don't panic.
Fourth boot, multiuser mode
Restart Bochs
After another
bochs -q -f bochsrc
you boot into multisuser mode.
|
386BSD Release 0.1 by William and Lynne Jolitz. [0.1.24 07/14/92 19:07] Based in part on work by the 386BSD User Community and the BSD Networking Software, Release 2 by UCB EECS Department. pc0<color> at 0x60 irq 1 on isa wd0 <generic> at 0x1f0 irq 14 on isa fd0 drives 0: 1.44M at 0x3f0 irq 6 drq 2 on isa ne0 ethernet address fe:fd:00:00:00:01 at 0x300 irq 9 on isa npx0 at 0xf0 irq 13 on isa Automatic reboot in progress... /dev/rwd0a: 13409 files, 240517 used, 253130 free (674 frags, 31557 blocks, 0.1% fragmentation) starting network starting system logger. checking for core dump... preserving editor files clearing /tmp standard daemons: update crond. starting network daemons: routed printer sendmail inetd. starting local daemons:. Wed Apr 8 13:16:44 PST 1970 386BSD (odin) (console) login: || style="background:#000000;"| |
386BSD 0.1 is installed now. You are at the point where Bill and Lynne Jolitz said "Cut the Tape" on 14th of July 1992. Now that you have 386BSD installed you can take the opportunity to travel forward in time to the birth of modern BSD. In 1992 and 1993 people released patch kits for 386BSD. 386BSD 0.2 never came and in early 1993 David Greenman proposed a new operating system based on the patchkits with a new name: "FreeBSD."
A few months later Chris Demetriou wrote “So you say you want an interim release of 386bsd?” and officially announced the first version of NetBSD. The CHANGES file reads “Changes from 386bsd 0.1 + patchkit 0.2.2” and “some alpha patchkit 0.2.3 stuff (piecemeal, and in some cases improved)”.
For more on this part of history read:
- http://www.freebsdworld.gr/freebsd/bsd-family-tree.html
- http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/history.html
There is a BSD history book in the making by Jeremy C. Reed. It is very detailed and has a full annotated chapter on the patch kits. It is not yet in print, but rumor has the chapter can be obtained together with a warezed copy of NetBSD 0.8 in a manilla folder from a coughing, chain smoking guy in a raincoat if you know the right parking garage. For now see:
There were quite some patches. Rodney Grimes announced patchkit 0.2.3 in April 1993 and the last one 0.2.4 was announced in June 1993. The guided tour will bring 386BSD all up to the point where maintaining the patch kits became rather cumbersome. The shortest and most available route is installing the last two official unofficial patch kits and skipping 0.2.2.
Apply the first patchkit
Login as root, no password, and install the first of the two patchkits.
exec sh cd / tar -xvf pk023.tar mv patch dist cd dist/bin ./mkpatchdirs (echo y; echo; echo; echo IALL; echo y ; echo ; echo q)|./patches ./afterinstall.sh
Recompile the kernel
As instructed by afterinstall, recompile the kernel. For Bochs the GENERICISA will do for now. There is something to be said for adjusting the kernel configuration, but this is left as an exercise better done later on.
rm -r /sys/compile/* cd /sys/i386/conf config GENERICISA cd /sys/compile/GENERICISA make depend make mv /386bsd /386bsd.old cp 386bsd /386bsd sync; sync; sync shutdown -rf now
Fifth boot, GENERICISA
Upgrade the virtual machine and restart
Now that you have a proper kernel you can upgrade your machine to use some more than the 8 megs we gave it before.
sed -e's/megs: 8/megs: 64/' bochsrc >bochsrc64 bochs -q -f bochsrc64
Buildworld
The system is in a bit of an odd state, the sources are patched but most of the binaries are still the same. So put your new memory to good use, log in as root and execute a buildworld. Note that this can take a while.
exec sh cd /patch/bin ./buildworld.sh sync; sync; sync shutdown -rf now
and fire up Bochs again
bochs -q -f bochsrc64
Sixth boot, patched and recompiled system
Apply the second patchkit
Login as root, don't use su.
exec sh cd / tar -xvf pk023024.tar cd dist/bin (echo y ; echo ; echo ; echo IALL ; echo y ; echo ; echo q )|./patches ./afterinstall.sh
Recompile GENERICISA
rm -r /sys/compile/* cd /sys/i386/conf config GENERICISA cd /sys/compile/GENERICISA make depend make mv /386bsd /386bsd.old cp 386bsd /386bsd sync; sync; sync shutdown -rf now
and fire up Bochs again
bochs -q -f bochsrc64
Seventh boot, almost there
Buildworld
Login as root and perform another buildworld. Like before, this takes a while.
exec sh cd /patch/bin ./buildworld.sh sync; sync; sync
The system is now up to date with the last patch kits released for 386BSD 0.1. This is a good point to save a copy of your image. Except for the hostname it is now in a pristine unconfigured state. What follows are some things you can do with the system and this is a point to rely on in case of a screw up or trying different routes.
Reboot at least once without the f(astboot) option for a long overdue fsck. Put zeros to a file and remove it when the disk is full if you care about image compression.
Disk images created by roughly automating the above steps with github and travis-ci is available via this trilogy https://github.com/dugoh/386bsd0.1-c
Running 386BSD
Kernel configuration, rolling your own
In bringing up the system the GENERICISA kernel served well and is more than fine if you want to just explore the system. If you want to do some more crazy things, like trying to get modern software compiled or even something more mundane as moving swap space around you will end up rolling your own kernel. This serves as an example on how to do just that. More specific configurations later when they are on topic. For now make it fit the current hardware and software configuration. More in depth information about config(8) at http://docs.freebsd.org/44doc/smm/02.config/paper.pdf
As usual do
rm -r /sys/compile/* cd /sys/i386/conf
Now copy the GENERICISA configuration, give it a fitting name, eg. BOCHS, and dive into it with your favorite editor.
grep -v "^#" GENERICISA > BOCHS vi BOCHS
machine "i386" cpu "i386" ## Private ident, shows up in eg. motd. #ident GENERICISA ident BOCHS ## Zone info, leap seconds and all are ancient. ## Living in a 90s Berkeley time zone will do for now. timezone 8 dst ## We can handle a lot more in our emulator, let's double up. #maxusers 10 maxusers 20 options INET #InterNETworking ## No CD configured yet. #options ISOFS #ISO File System ## No NFS configured yet. #options NFS #Network File System options "COMPAT_43" #Compatible with BSD 4.3 ## No 4.2BSD boxen around at the moment. #options "TCP_COMPAT_42" #TCP/IP compatible with 4.2 ## No X installed yet. #options XSERVER #Xserver #options UCONSOLE #X Console support ## No SCSI configured in bochs yet. #config "386bsd" root on wd0 swap on wd0 and sd0 config "386bsd" root on wd0 swap on wd0 controller isa0 controller fd0 at isa? port "IO_FD1" bio irq 6 drq 2 vector fdintr disk fd0 at fd0 drive 0 ## One floppy is enough, second one is a bit broken anyway. #disk fd1 at fd0 drive 1 controller wd0 at isa? port "IO_WD1" bio irq 14 vector wdintr disk wd0 at wd0 drive 0 ## About 180 megabyte left, keep the slot for upgrade. disk wd1 at wd0 drive 1 ## Lot of things not in Bochs, not turned on or rather useless. #controller ahb0 at isa? bio irq 11 vector ahbintr #controller aha0 at isa? port "IO_AHA0" bio irq 11 drq 5 vector ahaintr #controller scbus0 #device sd0 #device sd1 #device sd2 #device sd3 #device st0 #device st1 #device st2 #device st3 #device cd0 #device cd1 ## Not set up for headless operation yet, screen and keyboard yes, com no. device pc0 at isa? port "IO_KBD" tty irq 1 vector pcrint device npx0 at isa? port "IO_NPX" irq 13 vector npxintr #device com0 at isa? port "IO_COM1" tty irq 4 vector comintr #device com1 at isa? port "IO_COM2" tty irq 3 vector comintr #device com2 at isa? port "IO_COM3" tty irq 5 vector comintr #device com3 at isa? port "IO_COM4" tty irq 9 vector comintr #device lpt0 at isa? port "IO_LPT3" tty irq 7 vector lptintr #device lpa0 at isa? port "IO_LPT1" tty #device lpa1 at isa? port "IO_LPT2" tty ## Network cards, Bochs only knows ne2k and we only have one configured. #device we0 at isa? port 0x280 net irq 9 iomem 0xd0000 iosiz 8192 vector weintr device ne0 at isa? port 0x300 net irq 9 vector neintr #device ec0 at isa? port 0x250 net irq 9 iomem 0xd8000 iosiz 8192 vector ecintr #device is0 at isa? port 0x280 net irq 10 drq 7 vector isintr #device wt0 at isa? port 0x300 bio irq 5 drq 1 vector wtintr pseudo-device loop pseudo-device ether pseudo-device log ## No Slip and PPP for now. #pseudo-device sl 2 ##You run out of these fast when running screen. #pseudo-device pty 4 pseudo-device pty 16 ## Just in case 386BSD wants to say something. pseudo-device speaker pseudo-device swappager pseudo-device vnodepager pseudo-device devpager #EOF
Now bump the version and give it a shot. MAKEDEV is probably not needed.
config BOCHS cd /sys/compile/BOCHS make newvers make depend make mv /386bsd /386bsd.old cp 386bsd /386bsd sync; sync; sync shutdown -rf now
You should see the bumped minor version number, new ident and compile time..
[0.1.1 (BOCHS) 04/29/10 05:54]
.. and some moaning about the missing second drive..
wd0 0:<generic> 1:<wdgetctlr failed, assuming OK> at 0x1f0 irq 14 on isa
If you look in / you notice your kernel got a lot smaller and dropped from around 500k to around 350k.
TODO
- Guest network config
- Disklabeling and adding swap space
- Tweaks to get big things to compile (limits, DFLDSIZ & MAXDSIZ / bash as sh )
- Upgrade to NetBSD 0.8 ;)
- Upgrade to 0.x https://github.com/386bsd/386bsd/tree/0.1
