Creating a boot loader

[brbaus]

Hi,

I am experimenting with building Linux Kernels and am trying to work out how I can create an empty VM container and then add a boot loader and Linux Kernel that I will build into it.

Has anyone used Fusion as an environment for doing this? I can't find any documentation that describes how you can create a VM using an OS that you build yourself.

Thanks

Bryan

[peetz]

Hi Bryon,

and welcome to the forums!

Why do you want to build an OS from scratch? There are enough Linux distributions available that you can install in "minimal" mode (e.g. Ubuntu server), or that are even available as ready-to-deploy virtual appliances.

So - unless it's for educative reasons - I would not try to build my own.

Having said that ... if you absolutely want this then "Linux From Scratch" will get you started: Welcome to Linux From Scratch!

- Andreas

[Mikero]

This is certainly doable.

You would choose the generic 'Linux' guest OS type.

Install your OS, install GRUB or LILO or whatever other boot loader you want, and then configure that.

Everything would be the same as it would be on a physical system, so you install the OS and then set up the boot loader.

When building custom kernels, you just add entries to your grub.conf.

Set the boot up timeout so that it gives you enough time to pick an OS before it jumps into the default kernel.

I used to do this all the time on my Gentoo builds, cuz that's how I roll