Arch Linux

stovellp

Member

Registered: 2007-08-16

Posts: 2

Archlinux on Microsoft Virtual Server - installs but doesn't boot

Hi all,

I'm trying to sneak Arch into our organization, but as we're very Windows-focussed it may take some time. I thought I would be able to install it as a virtual machine on our Virtual Server, but I haven't had any luck.

The system seemed to install fine, but when I restart the machine and take out the virtual CD it just sits there with a blank screen, but using 97% CPU.

Here's how I installed the system:

Physical machine: Core II Duo 2GHz running Windows Vista 32-bit, with 2GB memory and a 120GB IDE drive.

1) Setup a virtual machine - it has 256MB memory, and a 100GB dynamically-expanding IDE virtual hard disk.
2) Attached the Don't Panic 2007.08 BASE ISO to the Virtual Machine, and started her up.
3) Started the installer with arch ide-legacy. This is because I've run through this install a few times now and without this option it complains that it can't read from /dev/null a lot and that it has trouble writing to VHD.
4) Did an auto-prepare and selected all of the defaults to partition the virtual hard disk.
5) Selected all of the base packages and installed them.
6) Did the "configure system", and left everything as the defaults except setting the root password.
7) Installed the kernel, again leaving the defaults in the config file.
8) Installed the bootloader. Last time I used GRUB, but it sat there saying it was installing for over 2 hours. This time I tried LILO and it installed in less than a few seconds.

After all that was done I exited the installer and did a reboot. Now it sits at 97% CPU usage constantly and shows nothing but a blank screen. Using ALT+F1-F5 shows nothing.

Microsoft Virtual Server has support for the Red Hat and other distributions so I would have expected ArchLinux to work. Has anyone else had success in getting Arch to run on Virtual Server? And is there anything I did wrong in my installation?

Cheers,

Paul

stovellp

Member

Registered: 2007-08-16

Posts: 2

Re: Archlinux on Microsoft Virtual Server - installs but doesn't boot

Also, I get a lot of errors like this during the installation process:

Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 36032

sr0 would be the CD drive, correct? Why would it have trouble accessing a VM-mounted ISO (which has a correct checksum)?

Lone_Wolf

Member

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 11,911

Re: Archlinux on Microsoft Virtual Server - installs but doesn't boot

Well, according to this virtual pc 2004 supports archlinux 0.7.1 and 0.7.2 .
They claim virtual server 2005 uses the same core as virtual pc 2004 , so it should work.

Try installing with one of the previous isos, see ftp://ftp.archlinux.org/iso .

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)