kverma's hub

Initially I had used VMWare Server to host my QNX 6.32 guest OS, but newer versions of VMWare server just became too bloated for my poor XP laptop and I started my quest for lighter alternatives to run QNX GuestOS. I tried VirtualBox and found its interface much simpler to use, and it was not starving my Host OS by starting multitude of never-used-services. Ubuntu and Windoze GuestOS setup was a breeze. But when I tried to boot the QNX 6.32 guest OS, it simply would not. It just kept crashing 3 seconds into the boot up. Looked at the VirtualBox’s Guest OSes Supported page and found QNX in the red - not supported category. Googling around - found folks who had manged to get QNX 6.4 up but not 6.32 kernel. Here is what I did to get QNX Guest Os to boot up in VirtualBox.

Round 1: Get QNX ISO Image to boot up:

After much trolling on QNX/Virtualbox forums - found one tiny nugget buried deep in the forums - Need to enable Intel Virtualization Technology (VT) support in the BIOS. After this at least the QNX ISO Image would boot and was able to install on the virtual disk. Also need VirtualBox version >= 3.0.10

Round 2: Get QNX IP layer up:

Unfortunately each boot up would spew:

 "Cant locate PNP Bios, unable to locate pci server"

messages and ifconfig would reveal only the lo0 loopback interface. No LAN interface were detected, even with multiple permutations in the VirtualBox Network Adapter settings. Hmm…back to google.. Long story short - need to manually start pci-bios, io-net and use VirtualBox’s PC-net Fast III adapter to get the LAN interface to work. My modified /etc/rc.d/rc.local file (also available here) is pasted below:

# Manually Start pci-bios
/sbin/pci-bios
#
# wait for pci server to be available
waitfor /dev/pci
#
# kill existing io-net
slay -f io-net
#
# restart io-net for pcnet adapter
/sbin/io-net -d pcnet vid=0x1022,did=0x2000 -p tcpip
#
waitfor /dev/socket
#
/usr/sbin/inetd

Once this is done, restart QNX - ifconfig now displays the en0 interface. Use the usual means to get manual or DHCP IP assigned to it. Thats it - I could ping in/out of the QNX Guest.