Error running EasyOS on VMWare Workstation

[pgardella]

I am attempting to install EasyOS (5.8.2, 5.8.3, 6.0) to a VM using VMWare Workstation, and am running into some challenges, which I've seen in forum posts, but only around USB Drives.

What I've done is to convert the easyos image into a vmdk

Code: Select all

qemu-img convert -O vmdk easy-5.8.2-amd64.img boot.vmdk

, create a new VM with a blank hard drive, assign 4GB of RAM, copy the boot.vmdk into the VM folder, and create a new hard disk using that boot.vmdk and make it so the EasyOS drive boots first.

It boots into EasyOS and looks for disks, and cant' find

Code: Select all

/etc/fstab

.

I enter keyboard layout "45"

and I immediately get an error:

Code: Select all

ERROR: Cannot find easy.sfs
Have now dropped into a shell in the initramfs.
Please hit key combination CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot,
or HOLD DOWN THE POWER BUTTON TO SHUTDOWN"

Going into the shell to find easy.sfs I get one of two results:
1)

Code: Select all

/mnt/zram0/easyos/releases/easy-5.8.2/easy.sfs

is a symlink to

Code: Select all

/mnt/zram0/easyos/sfs/easyos/oe/kirkstone/

which contains many .specs files and .png files, but no sfs files.
2)

Code: Select all

/mnt/zram0/easyos/releases/easy-5.8.2/easy.sfs

does not exist at all

Running

Code: Select all

blkid

returns a single line:

Code: Select all

/dev/zram0: LABEL="EASYOSZRAM" UUID="8dab5899-1afd-4838-b70f-c7e5c12210b2" TYPE="ext2"

On my host Linux machine (Ubuntu), I can mount the easy-5.8.2-amd64.img file using a loop device, and see the contents:
partion 1

Code: Select all

❯ ls /mnt/loop
EFI  limine.cfg  limine.sys

partition 2

Code: Select all

❯ ls /mnt/loop/easyos/
easy.sfs  initrd  vmlinuz

The other forum posts I read talked about the speed of the USB drive perhaps causing these issues, but since I'm not using an USB drive, they don't _necessarily_ apply.

When I boot using a rescue disk, I can go into GPARTED and validate that both of the boot.vmdk partitions exist, the first MSDOS, and the second ext4.

I've tried this with the main VMDK formatted for ext4, or left blank with the same results.

I've also tried with both BIOS and EFI, with the same results.

And I've tried with 5.8.2, 5.8.3, and 6.0 with the same results.

I have screenshots if anyone needs more details.

Any suggestions? (This is for fun, not for actual work.)

Thanks!
Patrick+

The screenshot with the most details:

[n00b]

Increase easy-6.0-amd64.img to for example 16 GB:
truncate -s 16g easy-6.0-amd64.img

[rockedge]

Also feel like the boot stanza needs to be checked that is initiating the boot sequence.

[pgardella]

Increase easy-6.0-amd64.img to for example 16 GB:
truncate -s 16g easy-6.0-amd64.img

Thanks n00b.

Just tried that, with exactly the same results with both 5.8.3 and 6.0. "Line 1678: Cannot find easy.sfs"

[Airdale]

I've done this before.... But its been awhile. I can't remember a detailed step by step instructions, but think I remember the overall gist.

After a few false starts, I ended up downloading one of the old easy pyros that was still available as an iso format

I mounted the iso file as a CD and booted it up.
I think I had to try a couple different versions of pyro before I found one that VMware liked and would boot up.

I had mounted a blank virtual hard drive.
I used the SeaMonkey that came by default on pyro to download the latest easy image file

Then used Easy DD ( also available on Pyro) to flash the IMG file to the virtual disk.

Just like for a USB drive on a real install.

This took care of all the partioning, and everything was auto magically the right size

And had limime for bootloader.

Ended up working very well.

[pgardella]

I've made some progress.

It looks like the kernel provided in the EasyOS image does not detect the default hard drive controller that VMWare uses (SCSI):

It does work with the SCSI controller that Qemu uses however.

I have verified that the VMWare IDE, SATA, and NVMe controllers all work with EasyOS 6.0. Just not the SCSI one.

I'll play around with the SCSI controller definition later (available options are BusLogic, LSI Logic, and VMware Paravirtual (PVSCSI) adapter), but wanted to give an update.

[Airdale]

I've made some progress.

It looks like the kernel provided in the EasyOS image does not detect the default hard drive controller that VMWare uses (SCSI):

It does work with the SCSI controller that Qemu uses however.

I have verified that the VMWare IDE, SATA, and NVMe controllers all work with EasyOS 6.0. Just not the SCSI one.

I'll play around with the SCSI controller definition later (available options are BusLogic, LSI Logic, and VMware Paravirtual (PVSCSI) adapter), but wanted to give an update.

I used SATA