VirtualBox for eCS (OS/2)

VirtualBox for eCS (OS/2) is a project to port the latest VirtualBox to OS/2 and eComStation and provide a current, usable virtualization solution. VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). See ​About VirtualBox for an introduction.

Early versions of VirtualBox had already been ported to OS/2 but these efforts had been suspended due to technical problems and lack of the Qt 4 library for the GUI. With the Qt 4 library and the lastest GCC compiler available, basic obstacles have been removed.

The project team has several developers. Funding has to be provided by the OS/2 and eComStation community.

Sponsoring

We do have some money in the queue but it's not enough yet. If you would like to contribute to this port, you are welcome to buy a sponsoring unit for that at bww bitwise works GmbH onlineshop. 100% of that money will be used to port VirtualBox.

The bww bitwise works GmbH sponsor link is: ​http://www.bitwiseworks.com/shop

Partnership

XEU.com and bww bitwise works GmbH are pleased to announce to have a partnership in developing the VirtualBox virtual machine and it's configuration GUI. This will enable users to run VirtualBox on an eComStation or OS/2 host and adds to the versatility of the operating system.

Current Status

We are in a very early development stage

Latest Version

So far no releases have been made.

If you want to play with the latest development version, you can check it out directly from the SVN repository. In order to do so you need to download and install the subversion client for eCS (OS/2). Use the following command to check out the full source tree to a <local_directory>:

svn checkout http://svn.netlabs.org/repos/vbox/trunk <local_directory>

Build instructions

This current version of the configure script requires the RPM/YUM environment and the following develompent setup:

1. yum install ash which kbuild gcc gcc-wlink pthread-devel libxml2-devel libxslt-devel openssl-devel libcurl-devel zlib-devel libpng-devel libqt4-devel libidl-devel libvncserver-devel nasm libpoll-devel
2. mkisofs.exe from ​​http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/apps/mmedia/cd/cd-r/cdrecord-2_00_os2.zip in PATH
3. OpenWatcom? 1.9 (from here I believe: ​​ftp://ftp.openwatcom.org/pub/open-watcom-c-os2-1.9.exe)
4. SDL from ​​ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/sdl/sdl-1.2.10-bin-20060602.zip (needs a small patch, visit the older build instructions link below for the patch)
5. ash from RPM as the current shell

The configure script from the root of the source tree should be run as follows (under ash):

    export WATCOM=<path_to_OpenWatcom>
    export PATH_SDK_LIBSDL=<path_to_sdl>

    ./configure --with-ow-dir=$WATCOM --enable-vnc --disable-docs

You may also want to add an optional --out-path=DIR so that all build results will go to DIR instead of polluting the source tree.

For older build instructions see ​https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/OS/2%20build%20instructions

Reporting Bugs

Reporting bugs and requesting new features is done through the ticket system. You can view existing tickets, add comments to them and create new tickets using the corresponding buttons at the top of every page. If you want to submit a new bug or request a feature, please use the Search function first to make sure there is no ticket for this task already created.

Anonymous access to the ticket system has been restricted due to multiple attacks of stupid spammers we've been suffering from lately. In order to create a new ticket or comment the existing one, you need to login with your Netlabs login id. If you do not have a login id, you can request one at ​http://www.netlabs.org/en/site/member/member.xml. We are sorry for inconvenience, but at the present time this is the only way to avoid extremely annoying spam.

Mailing Lists

Project discussion is done through mailing list conversations. Currently, the following mailing lists are available:

• none right now

Credits

• bww bitwise works GmbH (management/development)
• XEU.com financial support
• several developers

• netlabs.org (hosting)

• VirtualBox.org

We also want to thank all individuals and organizations who made donations to this project and helped to make it happen.

Screenshots