General

This is a utility of need. I needed to get info from a virtualbox vdi image so that I could modify the boot sector. By modify, I mean to dump the required BPB info to an include file and graft my compiled oemboot boot sector on to the vdi. I did this a year ago and it has been used via a makefile since. What this means is I need to go back and figure out everything it does.

Specifics

Again, this tool is to make my life easier. Currently, I use Open Watcom v2 maintained by Jiří Malák. I compile it on a 32bit system, either an old Win XP image or a ReactOS image. I assume it would compile on AcraOS, I just have not tried to do so. I have only been using FAT16 because it is simple, and I just wanted to get things running.

My build flow is to compile my boot loader on a 32bit system, transfer the boot loader to a vdi image, and boot via bochs from Linux. To get the boot loader in memory, I use a custom boot sector named oemboot (I know, not very original). Without going into details, a vdi has a different structure than a normal hard drive image and it is tedious to extract the vdi information to an include file (BPB include) and, after compiling oemboot, writing the boot sector back to the vdi. The result was this tool that made the task easier when swapped to a new vdi or write a new boot sector to my dev image.

Code repo: Gitlab or My Gitlab

Be careful, while I put the repo together, I already see things I need to fix. Not big things, but mistakes that happen in a hurry. For example, in the v1.0 source if WRITEBPB is true I should skip the input file check until later. Oops.

How it works

The command line options are if you run vdi_info -h :

vdi_info: get dev image vdi information.
Version 1.0, compiled Nov  5 2022 with OpenWatcom 2.0

usage: vdi_info [-f alt filename][-i][-m][-p][-w] vdi_filename

   -f #  alternate input filename for -w option.
   -i    Dump BPB inc to bootpbp.inc.
   -m    Dump MBR to mbr.bin.
   -b    Dump active BPB to bpb.bin.
   -w    Write newmbr.bin to active BPB.
   -h    help message.

Valid option combinations:
  1. -m, -b, or -i single or all at once to dump MBR, BPB and INC.
  2. -w only or with optional -f <filename> for alternate BPB image to add.

The output with vdi name input results in some info about the image:

vdi_info fat16drive.vdi

Info: Input file found (fat16drive.vdi) and opened.

<<< Oracle VM VirtualBox Disk Image >>>
Image Version: 1.1
Image Sig: BEDA107F
Header size: 190
Drive Start: 200000
MBR Sig: AA55 Valid MBR signature!

Part num  1
State: 80
Head:  1
End:   1
Type:  6
Head:  F
End:   CD3F
Off:   3F
Sect:  32AE1

Part num  2
State: 0
Head:  0
End:   0
Type:  0
Head:  0
End:   0
Off:   0
Sect:  0

Part num  3
State: 0
Head:  0
End:   0
Type:  0
Head:  0
End:   0
Off:   0
Sect:  0

Part num  4
State: 0
Head:  0
End:   0
Type:  0
Head:  0
End:   0
Off:   0
Sect:  0

Active partition 1 found at offset 3F
Boot sector VDI offset:  2129408

All done!

-m

Read the vdi and get what is expected to be the MBR and check for a valid signature. If the -m option is passed then write the MBR to a file named mbr.bin.

-b

The MBR is scanned for the first active partition and extracted. If the -b option is passed, then write the BPB of the first active partition to a file named bpb.bin.

-i

So, here is the real use for this tool. When vdi_info -i <vdi file> is executed it outputs bootpbp.inc. Why did I name the output bootpbp.inc ? Who knows, I was probably tired or dyslexic. Anyway, I should really change it to bootbpb.inc. Passing -i goes through all the step above, read MBR, scan for first active partition, load the BPB of that partition, and dump it to an include file. The following is the output for my current development image.

; *** BPB output of vdi_info *** 

BS_OEMName      db  'MSDOS5.0'

BPB_BytsPerSec 	dw  0X0200
BPB_SecPerClus 	db  0X04
BPB_RsvdSecCnt 	dw  0X0001
BPB_NumFATs    	db  0X02
BPB_RootEntCnt 	dw  0X0200
BPB_TotSec16    dw  000000
BPB_Media       db  0XF8
BPB_FATSz16 	dw  0X00CB
BPB_SecPerTrk   dw  0X003F
BPB_NumHeads    dw  0X0010
BPB_HiddSec     dd  0X0000003F
BPB_TotSec32 	dd  0X00032AE1

BS_DrvNum       db  0X80
BS_Reserved1    db  0000
BS_BootSig      db  0X29
BS_VolID        dd  0X2A6316E8
BS_VolLab       db  'TESTDRV    '
BS_FilSysType   db  'FAT16   '

; *** end of BPB output ***

-w

This finds the active partition and writes a new boot sector from the file named newbpb.bin or the file name passed with the -f option.