How to boot Vyatta on Microsoft Virtual PC
Vyatta 3.0.3 (and its community equivalent VC4) boots fine on Virtual PC, which is really handy for firing up a “test” router. Unfortunately, the latest subscription release 3.1.3 (and probably VC5) fails shortly after the bootloader prompt with this error:
Vyatta Virtual PC boot error
The solution is to pass the linux kernel boot argument noreplace-paravirt. This is done on the live CD by typing “live noreplace-paravirt” and pressing enter (instead of simply pressing enter or waiting for the CD to automatically boot).
When you’ve installed to the virtual hard disk (using the install-system command), you’ll find it displays the same error. To boot the first time you’ll need to press Escape to access the grub menu, then press “e” to edit the default entry. Add the word noreplace-paravirt to the end of the line (after “console=tty0″) and press ctrl-x to boot.
When you get the login prompt, you can log in as root and edit the grub config file (nano /boot/grub/grub.cfg) to add the option to the command line permanently.
Tags: Microsoft, Virtualisation, Vyatta
December 8th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
I tried this and I still can’t get it to work
my config looks like this:
linux /boot/vmlinuz ide=nodma quiet root=UUID=94d125fd-1e25-4028-b884-6\
9cffc49544c ro vga=785 console=ttyS0,9600 console=tty0
initrd /boot/initrd.img
where do i add noreplace-paravirt? Between “console=tty0″ and “initrd /boot/initrd.img”?
or right after “initrd /boot/initrd.img”?
I tried both and neither worked. I just get a blank screen.
I also must profess my knowledge of grub is just about NULL.