Red Hat 6.2 (Zoot) on VirtualBox.

[athenian200]

Host: Windows 10 Pro
Guest: Red Hat 6.2 (Zoot from the year 2000, NOT RHEL)
VirtualBox: Version 5.0.16 r105871
XFree: XFree 3.3.6, protocol version 11, revision 0, vendor release 6300
Kernel: Linux 2.2.14-5.0 #1 Tue Mar 7 21:07:39 EST 2000 i686

I have a game from Loki Games I purchased around the year 2000 that is nearly impossible to run on anything newer than Red Hat 6.x, and it's not open source. If you upgrade the kernel, the glibc, or anything else, the game stops working. It's extremely specific and won't work with the next major version up. Over the years, it's become harder and harder to get any version of Linux into a compatibility mode that supports the game, until now it's basically impossible. I tried to keep an old K6-2 system around as long as I could to run this old version of Red Hat (and the game), but the PSU died.

I'm able to get the OS installed and running (after swapping out the virtual SATA drive for an IDE one), but there's a slight problem. The only video driver that works for X is the SVGA driver. Neither the VGA16 driver nor fbdev work. And the problem is that the driver forces a built-in 320x200 resolution... which makes X very, very difficult to use because most applications expect at least 640x480.

I really can't use a newer version of Linux for what I want to do without an insane amount of tweaking and patching that I really don't want to deal with.

So, is there anything I could use to get X working? I did try installing the guest additions, but they seem like they require a newer OS... it didn't recognize my kernel or my version of X, and talked about some package manager called yum when I'm using rpms. I don't get why everything seems to insist on a newer version of Linux, when it seems like one of the main reasons to virtualize something is precisely because software you need doesn't work on the newer stuff. Is this one of those things where it's just too old for virtualization to be adequate, and I'll just have to keep buying old Pentium IIs with video cards that Red Hat 6 supports?

[michaln]

The VGA16 drivers really really should work.

Anything better... well, not really. Yes, the Guest Additions require a considerably newer guest OS. It would be possible to adapt the XFree86 SVGA driver to support the VirtualBox emulated graphics device.

Does RH 6.2 support the VMware SVGA, or is it too old for that? Because that might work with VirtualBox. Actually I can probably find out myself...

Oh yeah, the VGA XFree86 setup is busted, the driver doesn't load ("There is no defined dot-clock matching mode 640x480"). The default clock config looks broken. Mode says it needs 25.175 MHz dot clock, driver says it only supports 28 MHz. This junk was SO BAD and it took them so long fix it. This can be fixed by adding a line 'Clocks 25.2' to Section "Device"/Identifier "Generic VGA Card" in /etc/X11/XF86Config. But that only gives you slow and ugly 16-color 640x480 resolution.

And sadly no, there's no VMware SVGA support in 6.2. Seems that Red Hat 7 was where the graphics support was greatly improved. If you can find an updated driver package, that might be a way. I'd also thing VBE + fbdev might work but have no direct experience.

[athenian200]

Thanks for the prompt reply.

Yes, that's exactly the error message I was getting. I probably should have included the output of the crashing X server with the VGA16 driver.

Well, that's actually very helpful. 640x480 is still a vast improvement over 320x200, and I can at least get a semi-working Red Hat 6 system up and running.

As a credit to you guys, no other Virtualization software I tried could even boot this OS, and one of them couldn't even install it.

I really didn't think one major version would make such a difference, but I can certainly try Red Hat 7... because I remember there was one patch designed to make the game work on Red Hat 7, but the next version broke it again, and by then Loki games was out of business.

[astm]

A little late, but maybe helpful for future tries to run an old Linux-Distribution with XServer 3.3.6 (even 3.3.5)
There is a so called "Frame buffer X server" in Slackware 7.0 until 10.2 for XServer 3.3.5 (7.0) and 3.3.6 (7.1-10.2)
The binary from 7.1 works btw out of the box with Red Hat 6.2 Zoot (Installed by hand)

zoot_Virtualbox.png (41.95 KiB) Viewed 6670 times

More than 256 colors are not possible, Packed Pixel Mode only to this Depth in Virtualbox, but far better than nothing or VGA16.
(https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackware ... 1/xxfb.tgz)

Due to the Fact, that the Source Code of this all are still there,
it should theoretically be possible to build this for other Distributions or even early Solaris Versions ?
(Naturally with the right Skills to do that, what I don't have)

[apoorvc]

What steps did you exactly follow? I've been trying this for the past couple of days now.

[astm]

From the xxfb.tgz Archive,
copy XF86_FBDev to /usr/X11R6/bin/ and XF86Config-fbdev as XF86Config to /etc/X11/ (overwrite or backup the old one)
Then, in /etc/X11, create a new Symlink from XF86_FBDev to X (delete the old one, if exist), ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_FBDev /etc/X11/X
Edit your XF86Config to the correct Colordepth, choose Depth 8.
At last, edit the lilo.conf in /etc to set the Framebuffer to the desired Resolution, with the entry vga=773, you set it at 1024x768@256,
also don't forget to run lilo at the Command-Prompt and reboot to apply the changes.
Normally now it should work.

Update:
Found out, that Red Hat have the same Framebuffer X-Server already with it, you can choose it as Generic FBDev during Installation,
only that Setup doesn't edit lilo.conf and so X won't start,
but after this is done, it works.

zoot_XFB.png (71.8 KiB) Viewed 6605 times

[apoorvc]

AYE IT WORKED THANK YOU SO MUCH

[Daniel@30]

Thanks for the answer. It will helpful for me.

[mvanle]

I posted an answer on Unix Stack Exchange (it was a reply to Red Hat 7.2 Enigma but the same procedure also works for 6.2):

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/710103/61504