Writing grub.iso to external hard drive about includeos

[fwsGonzo]

does the laptop use secure boot or EFI/UEFI? you would have to disable that

[tweekley49]

So the issue was something with IncludeOS being in editable mode / me working off your SMP branch. Somewhere in the midst of me configuring all that - VGA capability was broken. Once I did a clean includeOS install, it worked...

[fwsGonzo]

Do you get the GRUB menu? if not thats not something I can help with
otherwise, when you boot on real hardware you need the VGA stdout driver, otherwise you have no way to see whats going on
Qemu prints serial output in the terminal, which a real computer won't do, obviously
but you can connect a serial port to your motherboard and use a second computer to read the serial port output.

[tweekley49]

Yes. So what I did to ensure that was removed pointing to my kernel in grub.cfg and as expected, it failed, and gave me the grub menu. So when I edit the grub.cfg again from the grub menu and tell it to boot, I get the grey blinking screen. To me that indicates something is wrong with add_stdout(vga_output).

But here is the confusing thing - when I did a fresh build of IncludeOS it worked.

When I did a clone, added your smp branch, and built it / put it in editable mode - vga_output no longer worked. As described above, I could get to grub menu on boot but when I would point to kernel and run it - grey screen. No crashes, nothing, so it was running the kernel but not outputting it in vga like I specified to do in CMake file.

[fwsGonzo]

That's very strange - it really should print something as there is nothing changed in the startup of the OS. I would have to investigate that further to find out what's going on. I don't have a setup for running on bare metal right now, but I might try something later just to see that it boots properly.

[tweekley49]

Yeah - nothing will print when I am working off the latest IncludeOS in editable mode. Everything has been built, but I don't get VGA output.

[fwsGonzo]

The next best thing to do would be to try to run on more hypervisors with VGA enabled, with GRUB as the loader.

[tweekley49]

The next best thing to do would be to try to run on more hypervisors with VGA enabled, with GRUB as the loader.

I am doing a serial to USB using Minicom with a 38400 8N1 and the output doesn't get displayed properly. Is there a tool you would recommend?? The characters are coming through but the formatting makes it unreadable.

[fwsGonzo]

I think you can configure the minicom to display it correctly. We have done it before, but I can't remember any of the details - maybe @KristianJerpetjon has some insight.

[tweekley49]

I think you can configure the minicom to display it correctly. We have done it before, but I can't remember any of the details - maybe @KristianJerpetjon has some insight.

@fwsGonzo Any idea why VGA output would work on my VM hard disk but when I try to do it off a physical hard disk on a physical laptop, all I get is a blinking cursor after selecting the kernel? Same steps were done to both the virutal hard disk and the physical.