Dos Network Support

[rohded]

Hello, Somewhat Newbie with Proxmox. Much more familiar with VMWARE.

Trying to get network going on MSDOS or FREEDOS.

Both install ok.

When Network sw installed, neither will boot.

Clicking on start button comes back instantly as not running.

Any wild ideas?

 

[guruevi]

Are you sure it is instant? Because the boot sequence (BIOS screen etc) loads before any guest kernel runs so software shouldn’t affect it. More likely you’re getting a quick boot sequence (try reloading the console after you press boot, see any error messages?) and then your OS shuts down or crashes. Why? Dunno.

What software do you run? Maybe comment it out of config.sys and autoexec.bat and load the drivers manually while you can monitor. Last time I troubleshot networking on was with IPX/SPX, I know some very early (BSD based) TCP/IP implementations were done by Microsoft but that came on a floppy and Windows 3.11.

 

[rohded]

Hi Guruevi,

I rebooted the proxmox box a couple times and the guests came back.

It seems to have something to do with the network drivers. I matched the RTL8139 config setting with a NDIS drive on the guest.
Seems to have the problem.

Any more thoughts?

 

[guruevi]

I would suggest using the n2k_isa or n2k_pci on the host and NE2000 drivers in the guest. The RTL* drivers were more “stable” for Windows 98SE-XP era. Not sure where you got the drivers, but it’s a crapshoot about quality.

 

[rohded]

How to I change the host to that option? It is not one of the menu items.

 

[Kingneutron]

As much as I love it, proxmox may not be your best bet for virtualizing DOS. Might have better luck with virtualbox or Workstation

What application is this for?

 

[rohded]

It will be used for transferring DOS applications over for archival. Need to print lots of stuff out. Lantastic looks like it will work, just need to get the drivers working.

How does one add another network card to the host?

 

[Johannes S]

As much as I love it, proxmox may not be your best bet for virtualizing DOS. Might have better luck with virtualbox or Workstation

Or dosbox/dosemu in a linux vm

 

[VictorSTS]

How to I change the host to that option? It is not one of the menu items.

You will have to manually edit the VM config (/etc/pve/local/qemu-server) and set the model in the line for the nic as ne2k_isa or ne2k_pci. All the details here [1].

[1] https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Qemu/KVM_Virtual_Machines#qm_configuration

 

[dokkenrolf]

I managed to get network connection on my freedos 1.4, as I changed the <vmid>.conf like this:

name: freedos
net0: pcnet=BC:24:11:1F:9B:0F,bridge=vmbr0,firewall=1

"pcnet" did the difference, keep the rest. After this and a reboot a network connection works:

Hope that helps you too.

 

[guruevi]

I don’t know why Proxmox shouldn’t virtualize DOS, because that is what some emulators do - run QEMU with specific settings.

So if the OS is FreeDOS you can almost guarantee that it will work with the right settings, if the OS is MSDOS, that has seen no development since about 25 years ago (Windows ME was the last DOS-based OS), QEMU can do it, you just need more work finding drivers and instructions to get it to work in the OS. There are still new machines (embedded) being sold with (MS)DOS today.