VirtualBox simulator and emulator - now with added Cow

[nick.mccloud]

Newbie said:


- The VirtualBox Ubuntu session starts with the keyboard mapped to UK keys, so, some keys are in odd places (@ is ", # is £, | is ~ ...), and some seem to not be available (vertical pipe: | ???).


I'm pretty sure your keys are in the wrong place. You can:

1. Take off the key caps and put them in the proper British place OR

2. Try apt-get install keyboard-configuration to reset your keyboard


- The xtightvncviewer Debian session starts with a very small typeface that's not ideal for reading on smaller screens (e.g., netbooks, small TV screens - even HDTV displays).


Erm, this is just a virtual machine running an emulation as a make do until hardware arrives - netbooks & TVs are way out of scope - it's only the real hardware that you'd connect to a TV.


Perhaps no one has gotten around to making the values something a bit more friendly for smaller screens, or it's a reflection of the more restricted R-Pi memory and filesystem size environment (i.e., around 200 MB RAM and the typical smaller sizes of SD cards used for these kinds of projects, e.g., 1 ~ 2 GB).


The small size of the VNC viewer is no reflection on an actual real Pi - which has a gorgeous GPU which we can't even begin to emulate.

[nick.mccloud]

Jim Manley said:


OK, copied the .ova archive over to an XP machine and (after upgrading VirtualBox to the current 4.1.8) it immediately opened the archive for import.  The import succeeded and the Ubuntu image booted right up.  I rebooted my original Windoze 7 machine and tried again and, voila, VirtualBox imported and booted into Ubuntu.


Good to hear!

[nick.mccloud]

nmcc said:


2. Try apt-get install keyboard-configuration to reset your keyboard


Should have tested before I posted and not just relied on the debian wiki!

Try sudo apt-get install console-data

[PiCurious]

nmcc said:


You can download the VirtualBox image here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/606232.....ualBox.zip



Really helpful.  Thank you!

[bluesquirrel]

Hi all,

I have a problem!

I have downloaded the torrent file, I have my virtualbox installed, and the image running fine!

But when I trying to follow the instructions from the READ ME file from the desktop, then there is a problem:

"...

root@RaspberryPi:/home/rpi# cd debian
root@RaspberryPi:/home/rpi/debian# ./launchDebian
oss: Could not initialize DAC
oss: Failed to open `/dev/dsp'
oss: Reason: No such file or directory
oss: Could not initialize DAC
oss: Failed to open `/dev/dsp'
oss: Reason: No such file or directory
audio: Failed to create voice `lm4549.out'
VNC server running on `127.0.0.1:5901'
..."
Any idea?

Thank you for helping me!

[PiCurious]

bluesquirrel said:



VNC server running on `127.0.0.1:5901'
..."
Any idea?

Thank you for helping me!


Let me see if have learned anything... like you I thought I had a problem.  Then I realised that despite the errors I was being told that a VNC server was running, so all I needed to do was fire up VNC viewer to see what the RPi emulator was doing.

I reckon you just need to proceed to the next step in the ReadMe "connecting to the Raspberry Pi Emulator" and see how you go.  Disclaimer - I'm an enthusiastic noob

[nick.mccloud]

PiCurious for the win!

[Newbie]

- The VirtualBox Ubuntu session starts with the keyboard mapped to UK keys, so, some keys are in odd places (@ is ", # is £, | is ~ …), and some seem to not be available (vertical pipe: | ???).

I'm pretty sure your keys are in the wrong place. You can:

1. Take off the key caps and put them in the proper British place OR


Verrrrry funny, wise guy!  Are you gonna pay to have my keyboard replaced, now that I've destroyed all those little plastic nubs on the bottom sides of the keycaps that hold them in place?


- The xtightvncviewer Debian session starts with a very small typeface that's not ideal for reading on smaller screens (e.g., netbooks, small TV screens – even HDTV displays).

Erm, this is just a virtual machine running an emulation as a make do until hardware arrives – netbooks & TVs are way out of scope – it's only the real hardware that you'd connect to a TV.

Perhaps no one has gotten around to making the values something a bit more friendly for smaller screens, or it's a reflection of the more restricted R-Pi memory and filesystem size environment (i.e., around 200 MB RAM and the typical smaller sizes of SD cards used for these kinds of projects, e.g., 1 ~ 2 GB).

The small size of the VNC viewer is no reflection on an actual real Pi – which has a gorgeous GPU which we can't even begin to emulate.


Oh, I'm not so much of a noob that I don't know the difference between the emulation and the (alleged, depending on whether any R-Pi boards are ever delivered ) real hardware display output, including all the goodness that the 24 GFLOPS GPU and HDMI output will make possible (I cut my teeth on the original SGI GL on $50,000 Iris 2400 3-D workstations that could barely manage 30,000 Gouraud-shaded polygons per second back in 1986).  I was just commenting that the xtightvncviewer output is squished vertically pretty badly and I don't happen to know if/how that can be fixed.  Perhaps there's an rc file that sets the xtightvncviewer behavior, or there's a parameter/flag that can be set when launching it?  I'm ferreting through Google results searching for such things, but, so far, no joy.


2. Try apt-get install keyboard-configuration to reset your keyboard

Should have tested before I posted and not just relied on the debian wiki!

Try sudo apt-get install console-data


Not as easy as it looks on TV, huh, smarty-pants?

Seriously (who, me? ) thanks!

Hmmm, it doesn't seem to have had any effect - still getting characters with a stiff upper lip (and dodgy teeth ).  Is this one of those things where it only takes effect after a reboot?  *n*x without pipes gets old reeeeally fast ):

[zmerch]

Newbie said:



1. Take off the key caps and put them in the proper British place OR


Verrrrry funny, wise guy!  Are you gonna pay to have my keyboard replaced, now that I've destroyed all those little plastic nubs on the bottom sides of the keycaps that hold them in place?


No... you should be using a proper keyboard as well - the venerable IBM Model M. I still have several (it's all I use) with varied build dates from 1984 to 1994.

All my cow-orkers think I'm nuts, but I'm OK with that.

Glad I found this thread so I can tinker with a virtual R-Pi eagerly awaiting the real thing to be shipped...

Laterz,

"Merch"

[phenigma]

Newbie said:


Hmmm, it doesn't seem to have had any effect - still getting characters with a stiff upper lip (and dodgy teeth ).  Is this one of those things where it only takes effect after a reboot?  *n*x without pipes gets old reeeeally fast ):



None of the above mentioned methods worked for fixing my keyboard layout, even after a reboot.  To fix my keyboard I ultimately had to edit the file:

/etc/default/console-setup

and changed the line: XKBLAYOUT="gb" to XKBLAYOUT="us"

Edit this file in the virtualbox image (the ubuntu os), not the qemu RPi environment, and reboot the virtual machine.

This fixed my keyboard mapping within both the virtualbox image and the qemu environment.

J.

[Newbie]

phenigma said:

To fix my keyboard I ultimately had to edit the file:

/etc/default/console-setup

and changed the line: XKBLAYOUT="gb" to XKBLAYOUT="us"

Edit this file in the virtualbox image (the ubuntu os), not the qemu RPi environment, and reboot the virtual machine.

This fixed my keyboard mapping within both the virtualbox image and the qemu environment.

J.



It worked! *n*x is much happier with unclogged pipes

Thanks!

[PiCurious]

Hello again.  I am a bit stumped and could use a pointer, if possible.

I have the Ubuntu VM running inside V'box.  I can launch a terminal and apt-get update with no problems.  I can launch the ARM-emulating RPi from the terminal and log into it through xtightvncviewer as root.  Upon login I get an error messages about a deleted inode having been referenced (180240).  If I try to apt-get update from inside the emulated RPi I get 4 deleted inode reference errors (49279) and then a load of "Failed to fetch.." errors saying that URLs could not be resolved, with a final error indicating that "Some index files failed to download...".

I assume something is wrong with my network config, but after much fiddling I admit that I do not really know where to start looking or even how to begin diagnosing the problem (is it likely to be the emulated RPi, the Ubuntu VM, or the way I have V'box set up?).  If someone could give me a gentle shove in the right direction I'd be most grateful.

[rurwin]

My guess would be that your image file was corrupted. An inode is a component of a (HDD) filesystem. It seems to be booting OK, so it is not very corrupt. You could try running fschk in the RasPPi emulator, but that doesn't solve the root cause. The proper course of action is to run sha1 against the image file and compare the signature to the published one.

[nick.mccloud]

Wot rurwin said.

If you pull the rug on the emulator without shutting down from within it, it tends to pickup disk errors pretty quickly.

[PiCurious]

@rurwin:  Much obliged.  After some reading I've run sha1sum on the image file I downloaded and the output matches the content of the deb*.img.sha1 file that came with the dl.  So the download is fine and I guess I just need to start again.

@nmcc: Aha, so by killing the terminal from which I launched the emulator I pull the rug.  Oops, that rug has been yanked all over the place, which explains why I also managed to break the RaspberryPi.ova V'box appliance that I'd downloaded in an effort to rule out my presumed mishandling of the img file!  From now on I shall use the proper shutdown command as you helpfully hinted at in the OP, ahem <stares at feet, goes a bit red>.

I now have a working, emulated RasPi and have learned some more. Many thanks to you both.

[oranda]

On my Mac

cat /proc/cpuinfo

returns my actual i7 hardware not the emulated arm processor!

Is the emilator actauuly working?

[spurious]

I used these instructions:

http://www.smallbulb.net/2012/.....spberry-pi

the emulated machine runs fine, and has access to the internet

[nick.mccloud]

oranda said:


On my Mac

cat /proc/cpuinfo

returns my actual i7 hardware not the emulated arm processor!

Is the emilator actauuly working?


I suspect you've started up the VirtualBox simulator and you've typed that command in to terminal - you need to follow the rest of the instructions to start up the emulator.

[SN]

I have to say that this isn't a good way to run an emulated raspi.

It is sooooooooo slow running an emulator within an emulator.

Its not even that quick when qemu is running native on a linux platform - though I have noticed that the debian distro runs much better than the fedora remix one

[nick.mccloud]

SN said:


It is sooooooooo slow running an emulator within an emulator.


It would be if that were the case. With VirtualBox on x86 hardware you are running the simulator natively and then emulating the ARM using Qemu. The VM software probably puts a 20% penalty on running directly. However it is all self contained and easier to setup & remove.

[oranda]

All up and running now fine. Excellent work:-)

[tomekent]

Great work on this. It means I can refresh my linux memory before my actual R-Pi arrives.

[keble]

Hi, I am new to a lot of this (well, I learned assembler on a 6502!), and I'd appreciate some basic help.

I've got Virtual Box up and running on OSX Lion.

I've downloaded RaspberryPi.VirtualBox.zip, read the readme.

I opened the torrent file in Opera (new experience).

Here's the bit where I'm stuck: "Once you have imported the RaspberryPi.ova file into
Virtual Box, start the machine..."

Err - where is this ova file, and how do I import it?

Cheers, Rob

PS - looking forward to using the RPi - I designed the analogue bits of the original VideoCore GPU!

[keble]

keble said:

[snip]
I opened the torrent file in Opera (new experience).

Here's the bit where I'm stuck: "Once you have imported the RaspberryPi.ova file into
Virtual Box, start the machine..."

Err - where is this ova file, and how do I import it?

[snip]

Aha - solved. A bit of Google showed that I now have to start a Torrent client, so I have got utorrent and the download has started.

[colin B]

I've hit a problem - stupidly I updated the vbox image and now I can no longer VNC into the Pi!

I can start Debian but it shows the IP/Port address as ::1:5100 , typing localhost or 127.0.0.1 into the VNC server does not bring up the Pi emulator log in screen.

Is there anyway to solve this without deleting the complete vbox image and starting again? Linux isn't my strong point.

Thanks

Colin