DosBox Booting From HDD Image, FreeDOS Image created with qemu-img.

Question

I'm having trouble booting a HDD image with DosBox. I've only gotten either read errors, or boot failures.

The HDD image is a verified working FreeDOS installation, created with qemu-img.
The image has been formatted FAT32, and it's working as expected with QEMU. The Image is only 1G in size, and is a flat raw image. I have been able to mount it with Linux, for ease of file transfer. I even was able to boot with DOSEMU, After I mounted the image under Linux.

I would love to somehow just boot from the raw image file, but I would have no problem booting from a mount. I just can't get anything to happen, and I have read the Documents over.

I have verified DosBox is working as expected, with its included DOSlike environment. I would appreciate any help, as I just don't have much of DosBox experience.

Answer 1

I was forced to use bximage, and recreate the HD image all over again. Do it from DosBox first, then once everything is done, you should also be able to boot from QEMU.

It is a real shame we can't use a modern tool, such as the venerable qemu-img. Even when I manually set all the disk settings, ten ways to Sunday, it refused to boot. As soon as I redid the same thing with bximage, the HD image started to boot, I had no problems.

This question is closed, and dosbox needs to handle disks in the same manner as qemu. If I can wrap my head around the code, I might try and submit a patch.