[clug] FreeDOS 1.2 in QEMU VM for Debian Buster reports "Unable to locate the installation packages"

[George at Clug]

I have been able to install FreeDOS under Debian (9) Stretch, but not under Debian (10) Buster. 

I think there has been a change to the IDE interface in the version of qemu of Debian Buster.

If anyone has information regards Debian Buster's qemu version and IDE drives (particularly with FreeDOS 1.2), please read on and comment if you can add more detail. I would be very interested if anyone knows a work-a-round. A search on the internet indicates the issue has been reported, and so I hope an update will be released at some time.

George.


https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=934134
Dear Maintainer,
this seems related to the ATA_DMA=y configuration.
With a seabios package built with ATA_DMA=n,
a directory listing of the install cdrom is possible again.

https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10857581/



Using Debian Buster when installing FreeDOS I get a message; 
"Unable to locate the installation packages. 
A reboot may help. 
Do you want to reboot now?" 

Of course rebooting does not resolve the issue.

Following http://wiki.freedos.org/install/ the error occurs during  the step "The installer first needs to gather some information. At this step, the installer is reading configuration data."  

I was able to test Debian Stretch and Debian Buster on the same laptop (which has no physical IDE interfaces).

Note: in Stretch display type sdl is supported but not gtk, whereas in Buster gtk is supported but not sdl.


See the below version numbers as reported.;

Debian (9) Stretch
# virsh --version
3.0.0
# qemu-system-x86_64 --version
QEMU emulator version 2.8.1(Debian 1:2.8+dfsg-6+deb9u7)
Copyright (c) 2003-2016 Fabrice Bellard and the QEMU Project developers
$ qemu-system-i386 -m 16 -k en-us -rtc base=localtime -soundhw sb16,pcspk,adlib -device cirrus-vga -display gtk -hda dos.img -cdrom FD12CD.iso -boot order=d
qemu-system-i386: -display gtk: GTK support is disabled

Debian (10) Buster
# virsh --version
5.0.0
# qemu-system-x86_64 --version
QEMU emulator version 3.1.0 (Debian 1:3.1+dfsg-8~deb10u1)
Copyright (c) 2003-2018 Fabrice Bellard and the QEMU Project developers
$ qemu-system-i386 -m 16 -k en-us -rtc base=localtime -soundhw sb16,pcspk,adlib -device cirrus-vga -display sdl -hda dos3.img -cdrom FD12CD.iso -boot order=d
qemu-system-i386: Display 'sdl' is not available.