# Aros/Platforms/x86 installing

* Navbar for the Aros wikibook
* Aros User
* Aros User Docs
* Aros User FAQs
* Aros User Applications
* Aros User DOS Shell
* Aros/User/AmigaLegacy
* Aros Dev Docs
* Aros Developer Docs
* Porting Software from AmigaOS/SDL
* For Zune Beginners
* Zune .MUI Classes
* For SDL Beginners
* Aros Developer BuildSystem
* Specific platforms
* Aros x86 Complete System HCL
* Aros x86 Audio/Video Support
* Aros x86 Network Support
* Aros Intel AMD x86 Installing
* Aros Storage Support IDE SATA etc
* Aros Poseidon USB Support
* x86-64 Support
* Motorola 68k Amiga Support
* Linux and FreeBSD Support
* Windows Mingw and MacOSX Support
* Android Support
* Arm Raspberry Pi Support
* PPC Power Architecture
* misc
* Aros Public License

## ISO Image

Virtualized AROS supports non accelerated vga graphics and some limited 2D and 3D. When configuring the VM always try to start with as less additional (and new) HW as possible (no sound, network, USB, ide instead of sata etc). From there you could try to work your way up.
64bit is work in progress but please use a 32 bit nightly or a configured distribution first. A nightly has some additional debug which can be seen by adding sysdebug=all to the selected grub-entry.
VirtualBox and VMWare doesn't emulate the CPU but does emulate all other periphery and not just implement standards. Influence of host operating system are the exception.
Vmware and virtualbox will simulate different hardware such as video, audio, network so depending on the support for those in the guest OS. So if AROS supports NIC A better than NIC B and vmware simulates NIC A and virtualbox simulates NIC B then you may get a better experience under vmware.
More information can be found here

### Oracle Sun Virtual Box Install

VirtualBox (VBox) emulates a system, so your current machine's hardware is not important except VT (virtualization) must be set in the bios security section. So most desktop iCore intel or AMDs CPUs from 2011 and most laptop CPUs from 2013 onwards are best. Embedded chips are hit or miss though.
It can be described as virtualization CPU extensions (vmx==Intel, svm==AMD), in the bios as http://intel.com for VT-x & http://amd.com V-x or Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI
Specific emulated machine hardware can be set in VirtualBox config.
Please do not use any existing VBox vhd images, just create a 2Gb+ disk drive and boot the CD/DVD image in VBox and install from there. Create a new virtual machine with an empty vhd HDD Storage (a 5Gb HDD is plenty and it's far from being full), then mount the cd image of Icaros in VBox and boot your system (for "mounting" select the disc image from your VBox Storage virtual cd/DVD drive). Sharing network allows you to mount a windows share in AROS to easily exchange files.
The only settings changed from default were
* Processor -: Enable PAE/NX -> ON
* Storage -: Floppy -> OFF
* Graphics -: Enable 2D acceleration -> ON
The other options were already enabled -:
* USB -: version 1.1 OHCI
* Acceleration -: Enable nested Page tables (maybe ghosted out)
Here's a good setup that can be use for Vbox
* 1 CPU core (2 can be used if desired or stuttering occurs)
* 2GB RAM (if you can spare it; 1GB is also okay)
* 8GB HDD
* 8MB to 128MB video RAM
* Use AC'97 as emulated sound system (HD Audio sometimes works)
* sometimes necessary to specify an older chipset such as PIIX3 (in both motherboard and storage sections)
* only 1.1 OHCI USB seems to work
To install to a physical USB pen drive stick from a downloaded AROS iso image in Virtualbox. Install Extension as described below
Extension patch matched for VB 7.1 7.0 6.1 or 6.0 version
Under Windows, VirtualBox might be needed to run as Administrator. In linux/mac something similar
log out and log in again (reboot computer)
just make sure you disable the USB device under the host OS like Windows, MAC or Linux, then add it in VB settings. Once you've done that just live boot from an iso (in VB) and run the AROS installer as normal, selecting the USB device as the install to media. The installed system will then boot from any system. Its also a method that will get AROS running on some systems that are otherwise tricky to get AROS to install on.

#### Issues

A P4 system, most definitely, does not have the virtualisation support i.e. slow. Most later CPUs (2006+) often needed a bios setting manually enabled for core2duo's, i's or athlon x2's, ryzen to do hardware virtualization. They were shipped with it disabled. This provides faster running speed.
VT-x is disabled in the BIOS for all CPU modes (VERR_VMX_MSR_ALL_VMX_DISABLED). You need virtualization Technology enabled in the Bios
* Reboot your machine
* Press Esc, F2 or F10 to enter BIOS.
* Security-> System Security
* Enable Virtualization Technology (VTx) and Virtualization Technology
* Save and start the machine.
VT-x is disabled in the BIOS for both all CPU modes ... Select the Virtual device and choose Settings · Navigate to System and click the Processor tab · Tick the check-box, Enable PAE/NX · Click OK
Booting issues try disabling DMA from the GRUB's command line, it is known to cause several issues with virtualbox's IDE.
Here is the information to set custom screen resolution. VboxManage is actually a tool located in the installation folder of VirtualBox, you need to launch it from a command prompt with the above parameters in one line, changing "VM name" with the name of your virtual machine. The .xml file will be auto-magically updated then, no need to manual edit it.
To add the resolution:
Then in AROS, edited AROS:boot/grub/grub.cfg - copied an existing entry and changed it to 1920x1200 and made sure ATA=32bit,nodma
If you just want to exchange files between AROS and windows, use the following set up:
* attached to : Host Only adapter
* name : VirtualBox Host only adapter
* Adapter : PCnet-FastIII (Am79C973)
* MAC adress : ?????????????
In AROS choose HDCP and Use FileZila client from windows and Icaros default configuration for the FTP server.
The hang while booting AROS on VirtualBox 4.0.0 seems to be caused by the timer hardware emulation (again!) rather than anything ATA specific. ata_InitBus asks timer.device to wait for 100us but it never finishes. However, AROS programs the oldstyle PIT controller in a dynamic way, a way which new virtualbox don't like as it seems. VBox boots again if timer 0 is set to mode 0 or 3. I haven't tried this on real hardware yet though.

### Proxmox Install

Proxmox VE is designed for enterprise servers without audio outputs. Either PCIe passthrough of an (on-board) sound device or setup audio via the (virtual) network.
athlon | core2duo | coreduo | host | kvm32 | kvm64 | max | pentium | pentium2 | pentium3 | phenom (default = kvm64)
CI Pass-through method using intel_iommu=on is important and iommu=pt is not good
Run below to check if the soundcard got its own IOMMU group
* ich9-intel-hda: emulates Intel HDA Audio on ICH9 chipsets
* intel-hda: emulates Intel HDA Audio on ICH6 chipsets. Use if the ICH9 one does not work properly
* AC97 intel 82801AA : useful for older OS`s like Windows XP
Might want to add to VM's .conf file
For the SPICE audio driver to work, you're going to need the SPICE graphics driver
Network Card Model. The virtio model provides the best performance with very low CPU overhead. If your guest does not support this driver, it is usually best to use ne2k_pci , rtl8139 or pcnet
Changing it back to i440fx fixed network
Proxmox ref,

### VMWARE Install

VMware virtual machine is exactly the same virtual machine no matter what the host is. That's because VMware hooks just in the host CPU and exposes the model you have to the guest environment. But all the rest, including the USB controller (UHCI, EHCI or XHCI on newer versions), the ethernet NIC model and the sound card are EMULATED in a real emulator-fashion.
* VMware 14
* VMware Player 12.1 works
* VMware 10
* VMware 09
* VMware 7.1 last xp version works
Create a new virtual machine with
mount Icaros Live CD/DVD iso image as a CD/DVD unit and install it as you would on a real machine
To Install to USB is compatible with most contemporary VMware desktop products like Workstation and Player (which is free and available both on Windows and Linux, but you'll need to dig a little in VMware website to find it), and the bare devices needed for installing Icaros onto a pendrive: a virtual DVD device and a USB controller, already configured to use USB 1.1 speed only - since 2.0 under VMware is kind of broken in AROS, at the moment.
Have to change "insert DVD" with "mount DVD ISO in VmWare" when required.
It will create a .vmx file of the desired size and attributes. You use it as main disk and install AROS on there.

### QEmu Install

Icaros Full and Light have a QEmu setup included within.
Qemu on Windows also not really recommended because it does not support KVM (I didn't know that before) so its VERY slow, and qemu does not support USB on windows (2015)
Have used the following as complete Qemu start command, which have worked for most operating systems
For older QEmus
PS: if QEMU can see your C:\ drive as a FAT device, you can mount it on AROS. But you've better using ftp.
IcAROS has a special place (PUB:) for handling files. The ftp server is on the AROS side, it's loaded at boot time and accepts connection to the PUB: directory. Use this place to keep your files and then move 'em wherever you want. If you want to get files FROM AROS, just place 'em in PUB: launch FileZilla on windows and get 'em with it.

#### Issues

absolutely do not use USB-hubs, USB-switches etc. also try all USB-ports. Remove as much devices from same USB header as possible.
You could also try USB-legacy mode in bios.
If you have done all of that and it still does not work than you are one of the unlucky people that have a problem with USB-support for your USB-device and/or chipset
The 32bit.bat file contains the -USB switch. But that's not nearly enough to have Icaros give you access to the USB stick. The switch won't automount or do anything to your plugged in USB stick. It doesn't appear, whether you plug it before, after qemu starts, after or before you reach workbench, whatever. Qemu won't autoload the USB that's connected, worst, Kqemu doesn't solve or optimize that whatsoever.
To make sure your keyboard is set correctly make sure that the corresponding values are like the ones below:
Should you find that some of your keys do not work or "press" the wrong key (in particular, the arrow keys), you likely need to specify your keyboard layout as an option. The keyboard layouts can be found in /usr/share/qemu/keymaps.
If you don't hear any sound in QEMU 0.10.x, you'll have to set QEMU_AUDIO_DRV=fmod (available: dsound; fmod; sdl; none ; wav (dump to file) - see QEMU documentation for information.

### Microsoft Virtual PC

still being tested...

### Parallels Desktop Lite

tried both the 386 and x86-64 ISOs but both show the (Grub?) startscreen for selecting GFX, and both fail to black window regardless of the resolution used

## Install to USB Pendrive

Covered VirtualBox to add hardware USB support above and for ease of use and portability, USB installs are probably the best option for most users.
A PDF manual can be found on the Icaros Desktop site.

### Aros Installer

Start from a clean USB pendrive: no partitions at all, use the wipe option from InstallAROS to clear the USB pendrive
A few times the existing non-AROS partitions are still there after the wipe. So remove the USB drive, re-insert it and start installAROS again.
Choose 'only use free space' option from the AROSInstall app. OK. Setup how many partitions needed and note DU0 being displayed
Before rebooting, open SYS:Tools/HDToolbox and look under usbscsi device to see if a PC-EBR and AROS RDB partition(s) has been created. If not start InstallAROS again which sometimes does the job.
'Use existing AROS Partitions'
Things to keep in mind...
* There are additional issues with U3 partitions and other extra/hidden partitions already existing that Sandisk and others in the past have used. They can be removed or BETTER assign the AROS partition to unit number 1 or higher.
* Do not under ANY circumstances change the name of the boot volume or the install won't work
* using default install selecting usbscsi.device and unit 0 or 1 - needs to match the physical unit number see HDToolBox to investigate
* don't try Freedroid or any SDL program whilst making your USB stick as it causes the whole machine to freeze/slow.
* You may need to use this utility to recover a damaged corrupted usb drive or use the HP boot utility. Please note these have not been tested under Windows and should be virus checked before use.
Before installing AROS, you may want to add a FAT16 or FAT32 partition, to aid copying files between various operating systems...
1. boot windows or use Linux GParted (Primary Partition Fat32)
2. right click on My Computer, choose Manage > System > Disk management.
3. Click on the pendrive's blank space
4. create a small FAT volume on it (0.5 to 1Gb), and quick format it in simple FAT mode
If a FAT Partition is not required...
1. boot into AROS from a CD image and then plug in the USB pendrive.
2. Double click with the mouse on AROSInstall on the screen
3. Choose Use Free Space with arrow keys or mouse
4. Change IDE option to USB. To the right, usbscsi device should now show (DH0: should change to DU0:)
5. choose to create a new AROS partition, create a 500MB partition for nightlies or a 2GB+ partition for Icaros (for example a small DU0: for sys: and larger DU1: for Extras:)
7. reboot when required - AROS will load again - make sure that a desktop icon with a name of Aros shows
8. launch AROSInstall again by double clicking with left mouse button, choose use existing aros partitions, if DU1: created tick choose use Work: partition for

### Manually via HDtoolBox

* Physical media device e.g. Hard Disk, usb, etc
* Partition table types (either UEFI newest or MBR old)
* Partitions - however many sub disks you need and the sizes can vary up to the size of the physical media
* Filesystem - usually NTFS (windows), ext3 / ext4 (Linux) or hfs+ Journaled (Mac OSX) and SFS on AROS
* Files - your stuff
Read more here.
If an icon does not show on the desktop after using InstallAros, you will be left with the only option using HDToolBox.
Double click on sys:Tools/HdToolBox and you are presented with two windows - left hand side (LHS) the drives and to the right (RHS) information regarding the drives.
In the left hand side window (LHS) double click on usbscsi.device and it will change to show the Units (could show as the name of the device) that are available, click one of these to show the Partitions already on the drive.
There can be three 'layers' of Partitions - top layer is primary/extended partitions, followed by another lot in the extended one and finally within that are the DH0: DH1: (hard disk) DU0: DU1: (usb stick pen drive)
So selecting the right layer. Select the last Partition and click on the Add Entry button below. Add Entry presents a window with four conditions along the top - Unselected Empty, Selected Empty, Unselected Used, Selected Used and a long track underneath with represents the total storage capacity available and this is where the above four states are shown in various positions on the device according to how you setup
select the empty space (usually to the right) on the long track and click OK
* Partition 0
don't worry about it showing another partition 0 as it gets renamed when you save later.
select it and choose Resize/Move button if the partition is of the incorrect measurement - click on the partition on the long track that needs resizing and change the size in gigabytes G on the lower RHS gadget and press return (typical MUI behavior). The track information should change to indicate the correct partition size. Click OK.
* S Partition 0 shows that something has changed or amended
Select the new partition 0 and Click Create Table and click on one selection of RDB, PC-MBR or PC-EBR. Highlight one and click OK
* If PC-MBR primary chosen for FAT32 partitions (limit of 3 or 4 slots)
* If PC-EBR extended chosen for AROS partitions to save running out of PC-MBR 'spaces'
* If RDB Amiga/AROS special, select 'Change Type' button and select AROS RDB Partition Table
Click Change Type for the filesystem used on this partition and a requester shows with type already set to 0x30 (Aros Installer default). It needs to be changed to 0x2f in the lower zune (mui) text box ie SFS BE (Smart File System) partition, press return/enter key and click OK
* Old Filesystem
* Fast Filesystem
* Fast Filesystem (intl)
* Smart Filesystem BE (PowerPC Amiga etc)
* Smart Filesystem LE (IBM PCs)
select SFS BE for historic reasons
Go up a level - Click Rename if DH0 is not the correct device (used quite often).
If you need to go to the top of the left hand side window where there are two white .. or the Parent button which means going up in terms of information (ie. Partitions (DU0, AROS, PC) -> Units (Named) -> Devices Driver #?.device)
Click on Switches button and tick
* Active for partition table use usually (usually on the primary/extended layer ie not used often)
* Automount for most DH? or DU? and Bootable used on one DH0 or DU0 only - then click on OK
Selecting back to the usbscsi.device or Units display info but not double clicking will allow the Save Changes box to become available. Save Changes.
The new partition is not automatically formatted. Open a shell (right win key and w) - type assign to see if one or more USBSCSIxPy has been set up (take a note of the x and y are numbers).
format DEVICE USBSCSIxPy: Name Aros QUICK
assign DU?: USBSCSIxPy: ? in the amiga world represents a character (in this case a number) just like dos and linux use *
Summary
Usual sequence of Button pressings = Add Entry - Resize/Move - Create Table - Change Type - Rename - Switches
* Partition Table - needed for most 'Add Entry' except the last bit adding devices DH0, DH1, DH2, DU0, DU1, DU2 etc
* Partitions - auto set depending on how many 'Add Entry' made
* Partition Type - needed for each 'Add Entry'
* Active - set one partition (usually PC-EBR which usually includes the AROS RDB Partition Table one)
* Bootable - for your DH0 or DU0 via Switches button
* Autoboot - for all your DH? or DU? via Switches button (? in this case represents a number starting from 0)
Add RDB Table partition
Add Entry - Create Table - Change Type - Switches
Add AROS Partitions
Add Entry - Resize/Move - Change Type - Rename - Switches
You can have four primary partitions, or three primaries and one extended. The extended can be split into up to more than 60 logical partitions, the amount supported is OS dependent. These are the rules that Microsoft created, and that MS-DOS implemented. Microsoft OSes will not allow you to create another extended partition if there is already an extended partition in the MBR.
An example of finished stick with 2 FAT partitions and unallocated on Unit 0 or other higher numbers if more than 1 device tethered
Using AROSInstall turns the rest of the unallocated space into an extended partition to save losing more PC-MBR slots (max 3 or 4)

### Grub4DOS

grub4dos can already boot the kernel via the floppy image
As soon as the fat-handler is romable all you would have to do is extract to a fat USB drive and use grub4dos. :)
should (in theory) be possible to just dump the AROS files on a Fat32 formatted key and use grub4dos to boot, but otherwise hopefully this will provide an easy route for some.
Unfortunately, that (making a 'stock' USB image) doesn't work for many systems:
* USB flash drives with hardcoded geometries
* USB flash drives that are no-MBR, FAT only - they exist, and they turn into little bricks if you put on a MBR or NTFS - SanDisk Industrial CF devices used to do this too.
* USB flash drives with wear levelling logic that only works if they are FAT formatted - These are even more fun. They seem all fast and speedy when using FAT, but go very slow with any other FS. - And they wear out faster.

## Installing to Hard Disc

* Set up Partitions
* Installing to a Partition
* Booting from that and other partitions

### UEFI bios with Globally Unique Identifer (GUID) Partition Table (GPT) Disks untested

* Legacy ONLY [msdos partitioning table] with CSM mode set to ON
* UEFI + Legacy [GPT partitioning table] with CSM mode set to ON
* UEFI ONLY [GPT partitioning table] with CSM mode set to OFF
Inside the EFI firmware - Boot from UEFI to Legacy or Security -> Secure Boot SB disabled and CSM Legacy enabled and reboot
Press ESC or F2 or F10 or Del depending on the hardware to gain entry into the EFI.
There has been no time to complete GPT partition table handling (it's currently read-only, you can install AROS onto a GPT partition but you have to use 3rd party tools to partition the drive). Writing GPT is currently enabled, but DO NOT TRY THIS. It WILL destroy your partition table!!! CRC and backup table are not updated!!!
With the introduction of the EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) and UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface ie EFI v2) specification based hardware around 2012 which replaced older computers based on the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) boot and its associated MBR (Master Boot Record).
The EFI brought GUID Partition table (GPT) based partitions which Windows(TM) 7 and 8 now use. AROS had an update to the partition.library to support "GUID Partition Table" format disks added by Sonic Amiga in 2011/12.
* MBR legacy from the MS-DOS days
* UEFI spec
GPT does not have primary and logical (and therefore extended) partitions, but just partitions (if choosing the partition type gpt)
AROS does not have systemd-boot ndboot for uefi drives
Grub does not understand GPT partition tables and needs to be tricked into starting from one. You need to create a very small partition at the start of your disk to hold the grub stage2, (or stage1.5 if you would like to start stage2 from /boot).
Grub should store its configuration data on the EFI System Partition (ESP) aka EFI boot partition (type EF00). If your computer came with Windows pre-installed, an ESP should already exist, and you can use it in AROS and Linux. If not, create an ESP of around 550MiB or little more in size. Create a FAT32 filesystem on it and give the partition a "boot flag."
Although partition sizes are no longer an issue (greater than 128GB), the filesystem size limitations (SFS) now come into play.
Boot Manager and Boot loader functions are usually both covered by the latest GRUB, GRUB2, rEFInd or Elilo
NB. You need a BIOS boot partition for a BIOS native install to GPT. You need an EFI system partition for a UEFI native install. You don't need either for a BIOS native install to MBR. You never need both.
If you install windows 7 or 8 from DVD media onto a fresh unpartitioned disk it will convert your HDD to GPT partition table and dual boot will be almost impossible... (or will give you a lot of headache) to avoid this, dump the win7 iso to a USB using Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool or have the disk setup as bios/mbr partitions first. Installing from USB should not change the hdd into a GPT partition table based partitions.
As a last resort, a protected MBR allows booting from a legacy BIOS, and protects GPT from GPT-unaware utilities (such as fdisk) NB. Choose the option to create a new partition table. Choose MSDOS from the list. Hit ok than apply/commit all changes. ATTENTION this will erase all your data and MS Windows (or any other OS) will disappear from your hard disk. Your HDD is now converted from GPT to MSDOS (MBR type). You can now boot your preferred distro, create your partition scheme in the old way. This could possibly void your warranty, so check with the hardware vendor first.
Windows is a little trickier, since it ties its partition table type to its boot mode -- Windows boots in BIOS mode only from MBR disks and in EFI mode only from GPT disks. Thus, switching the Windows boot mode requires changing the partition table and installing a new boot loader.
There's a lot of complexity in any triple-boot setup, and the partition table types and boot modes of most of your OSes One is to convert both Windows and Ubuntu to boot in EFI mode. Another is a hybrid setup using reFind
DB DBX and SB (KEK and PK) options are not signed allocated keys options for AROS yet due to Microsoft(TM) Revenue generating fee.

### BIOS boot and MBR based Legacy Partitions

Usually a hard drive needs to be partitioned (i.e. make space available within a hard drive's capacity) for any operating system (OS) to be installed. But AROS requires that 5GB, 10GB or more are left unpartitioned i.e. empty at the end of the drives' capacity. You do NOT have to create partitions, the installer will do that automatically. SFS filesystem that AROS currently uses has a partition size limit of 120GB but it can be anywhere on a larger hard drive with other partitions.
The AROSInstall program, using free space option, has also on its' first page an option tick to set up a Work (DH1:) partition. Then a reboot. On the first page again, select use AROS partitions. After the bootblock, locales and other dev packages tick page, there is another page with two/three tick options for using/installing/formatting to Work (DH1:). Please read these pages carefully to use properly.

#### One Hard Disk Drive

If the whole hard drive is one big windows partition, then a partition utility can be used to shrink the partition down in size. Care must be taken or you take the risk of rendering the drive inoperable especially with Windows Vista. If you are in any doubt, do not change anything or maybe think about an USB drive install instead.
For XP, you just right click on "My Computer" and choose Manage > storage > disk management, then resize the XP partition. Leave some free unpartitioned space at the end of the drive, say 10 or 20 GBs, and AROS will use it for its own partition when you'll install it. Other examples are gparted in Linux and Vista Resize.

#### Two or more Hard Disk Drives

These are the important steps to perform on your PC if you want to install AROS on second Hardisk "without the DualBoot":
* Using a Partition Editor Delete all partitions from the Hardisk you want to use for AROS
* After deleting the partitions, make the Hardisk RAW, this is done with a Partition Editor with the Wipe command, without this procedure many HDs or Pendrives will not Boot, GRUB corrupted.
Wipe does not need to be done for the whole hardisk, it would take a long time, important to do it for the first 500 MB or 1GB. The Wipe will clean the old Bootloader stored on HD well.
* Having done this unplug the primary Hardisk where Windows is installed (to avoid doing damage), and in its place plug in the second Hardisk.
* From the Bios enable SATA to AHCI switching.
Boot AROS from DVD or PendriveLive, run installAROS and install AROS, leave SFS filesystem set (best choice)
* After the installation is finished turn off the PC and connect the 2 Harddisks (in SATA Mode, no need to set AHCI anymore), the one where you installed AROS you can put it wherever you want, then from the Windows Boot Menu you can choose which one to boot, by default it will boot the operating system set to SATA 1
To use the "drivemap" command and "chainloading" because my configuration is:
First of all found it odd but if you have a hard-disk on the 2nd IDE channel, but is set as first boot device on BIOS, grub will see it as "(hd0,1)" = first hard-disk.
So, since Windows doesn't like to be booted from a 2nd hard-disk, had to use command "drivemap -s (hd0) (hd1) as described above.
An example entry in Grub.cfg is:
Note that even after using the "drivemap" command to swap the drives, the Windows hard-disk is still seen as (hd1,1) = 2nd hard-disk, first partition.
To check how your hard-disk partitions are seen by grub you can simply enter in command-line mode and type "ls" command to list all partitions, then "ls (hd1,1)" for example to see the information on the partition.
There are ways to editing the bios every time, but it's much faster and nice to select the OS on Grub menu IMHO. Most old MB Bioses do have a boot-menu pressing F8 or F12 at boot time, but you can choose only HD, removable devices (CD-ROM) or network boot, and if you choose hard-disk, it won't let you choose which one, taking always the first-ide channel.
Read more here or Double-click on InstallAROS application icon (then read the Icaros manual)!! and here essential reading for Acer Aspire A110/A150 9 inch users

#### Manual Install

Not recommended but an option
An alternative is to use Linux to create the partitions, you can skip the RDB and create two primary/logical partitions for AROS in Linux with type 2F hex. The partitions will be called "ATAxPy:" in AROS, where x is the ata.device unit number and y is the partition number. The AROS shell command "Assign DEVICES" will show you their names so you won't have to guess.
Created First partition ( 20 GB ) on SDAy partition , with 0x2F ID. Zeroed under linux ( dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sday) to be sure to destroy any data on this partition.
Boot Icaros ( 1.3.x ) release and did the following :
Checked partition ready in system - open a shell and assign, and saw a partition called 'ATA0P0'.
And launched the installer and installed the basic system. Did a reboot and checked that all files are there.
Install-grub2-i386-pc ata.device UNIT=0 GRUB=SYS:boot/grub
Install-grub2-i386-pc usbscsi.device UNIT=0 GRUB=SYS:boot/grub
You should check beforehand that device and UNIT is correct else errors may occur

### Errors

Once AROS is installed, you may need to edit the grub boot option. It is found in SYS:boot/grub/grub.cfg. Or you can use the cursor/arrow keys on the boot screen to move up and down. Press e to edit. Ctrl and X to exit.
To check how your hard-disk partitions are seen by grub you can simply enter in command-line mode and type "ls" command to list all partitions, then "ls (hd1,1)" for example to see the information on the partition.
    Grub2 Picture Editing
NB. After my install crashed, I decided to reinstall. When booting the Icaros Install DVD (pendrive), Icaros looks at the hard drive, which it's supposed to, but for some reason it loads some of the settings from the hard drive, which since my hard drive wouldn't boot, neither would the install disc.
Also in a VM it makes it not want to install with a window stating that I needed to boot from the install disc, or if not that, it would stop within a few files stating that the drive was in an invalid state. This even made making a pendrive extremely difficult.
Suggestion. The Install Icaros application should be fixed not to load any settings from the hard drive whatsoever, and if it does, some way of informing the user would be nice. That would help immensely.
* Adding and using bootdevice=<DEV> from grub is advised.
The AROS Installer should also warn us with a Message saying "You have chosen AHCI Mode to install but AROS does not fully support this yet. The install may fail! Use SATA drive in IDE mode instead."
The native SATA/AHCI driver doesn't always work. If you get errors related to ahci.device, try disabling it. Press E when your chosen boot entry is highlighted in the GRUB menu, scroll down to the ahci.device entry, and delete it with Ctrl-K. Then press Ctrl-X to boot. If your disk isn't accessible at all with this change, you might need to change the SATA controller to IDE legacy mode in the BIOS: however, making this change will likely cause problems booting Windows on the same machine (if it's already installed). To disable ahci.device permanently, edit the text file "SYS:Arch/pc/grub/grub/cfg", and remove the ahci.device line from all boot entries you intend to use.
The ATA driver doesn't always work. If you get errors related to ata.device, try using the alternative, older version provided: Press E when your chosen boot entry is highlighted in the GRUB menu, scroll down to the ata.device entry, and change it to read "module /Devs/Alt/ata.device". Then press Ctrl-X to boot. To make this change permanent, edit the text file "SYS:Arch/pc/grub/grub/cfg", and change the path to ata.device in all boot entries you intend to use.
Also, the option "Wipe Disk" should read "Wipe Disk (Create AROS Partitions)" to be more specific. I would have used it the first time but I thought it could only "Clean" the disk!
The "noacpi" boot option causes all PCI devices to be invisible to AROS. Although disk drives may still work, network, sound etc. drivers won't.
Changing video resolution may cause a crash, especially when using the Intel GMA driver. I'm not sure if the new resolution will still be saved for the next boot. If not, you can work around the problem by temporarily switching to Wanderer in Icaros preferences.
Some VirtualBox settings are incompatible with AROS. Do not select ICH9 or ICH6 chipsets, nor SATA drives. Only use AC97 audio.
Some other caveats are:
* booting with ntfs driver and installed windows (although that should have been fixed). AROS tried to load from ntfs partition (and of course failed).
* moving files around partitions with old directory Opus (not magellan). No direct cause, just experience that it eventually _will_ break your filesystem. Just remove the button to prevent moving files around by accident.

#### Unknown root partition - Error 100

Getting a "Could Not Open Root Partition", "Unknown Error 100" when trying to install Aros.
* Some Sandisk 8GB and 16GB were a problem until you deleted the FAT partition already on the usb drive (did not work if resizing) and using another partition creator (like Linux GParted) to create a new Primary Fat32 partition. Afterwards, AROSInstall would then create the PC Extended AROS RDB partitions correctly. Icaros 1.3 can only install to one partition but 1.4 should install to dual partitions.
* If the partitions have been created with Windows(TM), please use ArosInstaller. It is Aros Installer that gives the error. That happens when the unit number is wrong. You can use HDToolBox to find out the correct unit number (although InstallAROS should be able to figure it out by itself in theory: maybe your RAID set-up is confusing it). Another reason could be that a partition editor like linux gparted or dos PartitionMagic has created a moveable? 1mb partition which is confusing the partition numbering system. It could also be that the partitions can no longer be detected. Check with a LiveCD of Linux or Haiku and use TestDisk with care to investigate.
* Sounds like AROS doesn't detect your HD. Add the option debug=memory to the GRUB config, and then when you boot, run "Tools/Debug/Bifteck to T:boot.log" in a shell. If you can, post the log to Aros-Exec (e.g. put it on a USB flash drive); if you can't get it off your AROS PC, just post some of the "[ATA]" lines from it.
* Also, does your AROS GRUB entry have "enableusb"? Without this any USB is not setup.
* There's probably a bug or incompatibility in ata.device then. The only potential short-term fix I can suggest is to try setting the drive to SATA mode in the BIOS.

#### DMA Error

* Try ATA=32bit,nodma or ATA=nodma on the grub boot line (e to edit and Ctrl-X to reboot).
* Test DVD for corruptions or reburn at lower 4x speeds
* Incompatible Hard Drive e.g. some Maxtors, etc
Freezes/stops at [ATA--] ata_Scan: Waiting for Buses to finish Initialising
If you don't need ATA, you can edit the GRUB entry and set
If issues with SATA hard drives drives
add "nosata2pata" in the ATA part of the grub line

#### No bootable media

* Try a reboot (nearly always works)
* press space bar whilst booting, try all the boot options, including booting without a startup-sequence
* use a CD or DVD boot disc to access the drive (especially with usb drives - unplug and plug in again)
* or as a last resort, reinstall grub either through the AROSInstaller (make sure that only the Boot Block Loader is ticked) or manually below (best avoided unless you know what you are doing)

## After AROS install, add already installed OS to AROS grub

Please install other OS's and leave the install of AROS to the last one. AROS currently requires its own implementation of grub to boot. AROS grub detects the Windows partition but others need to be added. Other installed OS's would be added to the AROS version of grub.
In grub console, use ls -l to show the various partitions on the drive and each uuid
Normally, grub-mkconfig will generate menu entries that use universally-unique identifiers (UUIDs) to identify various filesystems to search for files
the root variable will also have been set to the root device name, so prefix might be set to ‘(hd0,1)/boot/grub’, and root might be set to ‘hd0,1’

### Grub 2.04

menuentry "Windows XP" {
menuentry "Windows 7" {
menuentry "OS using grub2-legacy" {
Search devices by file (-f, --file), filesystem label (-l, --label), or filesystem UUID (-u, --fs-uuid).
Argument to search after –label is FS LABEL. You can also use UUIDs with –fs-uuid UUID instead of –label LABEL. You could also use direct root=hd0,msdosX but this is not recommended due to device name instability.
The ‘search.file’, ‘search.fs_label’, and ‘search.fs_uuid’ commands are aliases for ‘search --file’, ‘search --label’, and ‘search --fs-uuid’ respectively.
Under Linux, you can also edit the file /etc/default/grub and change that behavior. Edit it as root
and change the line GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden replacing =hidden with =menu. And change GRUB_TIMEOUT= to what you want. The timeout is in seconds. After making changes and saving the file run sudo update-grub to make the changes take effect next boot.

### Grub 1.97 (Grub 2)

Replace UUID with your system's own unique number. You will have to write it down before hand or use Linux LiveCD to look it up from Linux grub menu entry (/boot/grub/grub.cfg) There you will find also the correct kernel version of your Linux installation.
If using an USB pen drive as the hard disk, you could setup the first and maybe second partitions as fat32. A Puppy Linux live CD contents could be put into a directory on one or more of these fat32 partitions and use Grub4DOS to be set up on one or more of these fat partition(s) (PBS option not whole drive).
Whilst in AROS - an example to add to Arch/PC/boot/grub/grub.cfg (may have to turn on Show ALL Files to see this)
in grub, type
root (hd
(don't press Enter yet) and then hit tab once or twice to see what hard drives Grub can see.
The USB device, if it's recognized, will probably be hd1 if hard disk installed or hd0 if not.
Don't specify a partition number; just add a closing parenthesis. So the line will be root (hd1). Then after that, type the following:
Having installed Linux first (Ubuntu, etc.), you will find installing AROS next will replace the linux installed grub boot and will no longer show Linux as an option.
One option to get around this is to install the boot (grub, lilo, etc) on the Linux Partition itself (root) rather than to the MBR. Let AROS install to the MBR as it always does and set root and chainloader +1 to get to the Linux boot options. It does lead to two boot options being made rather than one.
To check how your hard-disk partitions are seen by grub you can simply enter in command-line mode and type "ls" command to list all partitions, then "ls (hd1,1)" for example to see the information on the partition as well as the UUID.
After Haiku has installed and bootmon (not used)?... Install AROS and add the following to /boot/grub/grub.cfg - changing the x in hd(0,x) to a number that matches your partition holding Haiku. (Ctrl-C then ls at grub boot edit)
for others with grub2, i.e. grub 1.97 or later, you must edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg
After installing FreeDOS no grub entry is shown after an AROS install, so add the following to /boot/grub/grub.cfg - changing the x in hd(0,x) to a number that matches your partition holding FreeDOS. (Ctrl-C then ls at grub boot edit). FreeDOS only likes primary partitions (1-3 or 4). No later logical partitions supported.
If FreeDOS is on another drive
Other partitions booting using grub2 needs parttool

## Setup AROS within a LINUX install
### EFI GPT Partition

TO DO

### GRUB

Normal Linux grub cannot recognize amiga (ffs/sfs) filesystems. But you can put AROS-kernel (aros-pc-i386.gz) and other .gz files to the place, where grub can find it. e.g. copy boot/aros-pc-i386.gz from AROS-cd to /boot directory (on a Linux partition). Now come tricky part, edit grub configuration file.
use the original grub.cfg file. That file has menu entries that uses the correct locations.
Since the list of modules to be loaded is almost 7 feet long, wanted to refrain from mentioning them as they can be copied form the original grub.cfg
The 'trick' is in loading the AROS-partions and sfs module into grub 2, so that the AROS partition can be accessed.
When setting the root you'll do just that and be able to 'load' the rest of the required modules from there.
( So, the first 3 lines in the menu entry from that example should be working, and the rest should be copied from an icaros grub.cfg file, so that the correct locations are being used).
or

## Floppy
### Writing

To create the boot floppy, you will need to download the disk images from the download page, extract the archive, and write the boot image to a floppy disk. If you are using a UNIX-like operating system (such as Linux or FreeBSD), you can do this with the following command:
If you are using Windows, you will need to get rawrite to write the image to a floppy. Please see the documentation of rawrite for information on how to use it.

### Booting

Simply insert the boot floppy into the drive and reboot the computer. When disk access stops and the screen is blank, replace the boot floppy with the system floppy (you can also insert a boot CD at this point if your PC has trouble booting directly from CD). If everything works you should see a nice screen after a while.

## Technical

Although there are many partitioning schemes, PC-MBR (4 partitions, or 3 plus 1 extended), Amiga RDB, or 68k/PPC Apple Partition Map. AROS uses a dedicated PC-MBR partition 'slot' containing something like amiga RDB as the first sector, with several partitions/filesystems inside (FreeBSD style...). Consequently, Linux can't normally read AROS FFS partitions because they're not contained directly in an MBR partition. However, there is a patch around for the Linux kernel to make this possible. Alternatively, you can create MBR partitions of type 0x2e and 0x2f in Linux to make FFS and SFS partitions. These will be named ATAxPy: in AROS, where x is the drive number and y is the partition number (both start at zero).
The installer should never overwrite any existing MBR primary or logical partitions, but it won't set up Linux in its Grub menu. If asked to install Grub, the installer will overwrite the MBR, but you can always save it beforehand of course.
Create an 0x30 type unformatted partition, then on the Aros installer and use "Use existing AROS Partition" and ata.device unit 0 for the bootloader (type ata.device myself it doesn't have it there already) and then the installation fails, with Aros installer asking me for volume DH0.
The x30 partition is a virtual harddrive for AROS. You still need to create an AROS partition table (a.k.a. RDB) and AROS partitions on this virtual drive. HDToolbox is the tool to use for that. You could have created the x30 partition with HDToolbox, too. Would have saved you one time booting with Acronis.
Trying to figure out how to create more than 2 partitions on my fresh Icaros install. Is this supposed to be working at the moment? The reason I ask this: I had 3 partitions in the past, but after some update, the third partition became "invisible". I could only see it when I booted a CD with an old version.
Now, with my fresh install on my 60 GB hard disk, I created a 4 GB dh0: and 10 GB dh1: partition in order to create a third partition for my data afterwards. But hdtoolbox tells me that there is no more free space next to dh0: and dh1:. I could add another "partition 0" one level higher, but I can't save the changes. Any ideas?
It can be done without reinstall. The trick was to resize the RDB partition table with hdtoolbox. After that, I was able to add another partition to it. Care should be taken though.
After partitioning with the installer, it should also be possible to create a second RDB table within the extended partition. I tried that, but the partition was also named "partition 0" and I was not able to rename it. I also couldn't create partitions in it.
Relabel does not rename the partition, it only renames the volume. In order to rename the partition, you need to run HDtoolbox, find the partition and enter a different name, then reboot.
The name displayed on the desktop is the volume name, though. The partition name is only used by DOS.
In order to relabel a volume, you don't need to find the partition name. You can enter
keep all my work in a dedicated partition (dh3), so normally formatting and/or reinstalling to dh0 my work is safe). Using 68k os3.x hdtoolbox however strips the drive of its "aros" drive tables, etc. (I knew this already, but in my frustration just didn't think about it), so I believe I may have lost everything. I'd repartitioned the drive to include an os3.x dh0: and dh1:, before I reaslied my error (have left a good chunk of the drive raw still too). Anyway, my question is in regards to data recovery. Is there a way to restore things to how they were, even if its just for the raw areas on the drive ?