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From: Wojciech Puchar <wojtek@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl>
To: Aryeh Friedman <aryeh.friedman@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: using FreeBSD to create a completely new OS
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> suitable starting place)... what I mean is I want to start with the
> MBR (boot0) and go on from there... I only have one *REAL* machine to
> work with which means I need to work with something like
> emulators/virtualbox-ose... I also want to do as many automated tests
> as possible (for example seeing if the installer copied the MBR [and
> later other stuff] correctly to the virtual HDD).... for this reason I
> have a few questions on vb (or perhaps QEMU if not possible in vb):
>
> 1. Can it be scripted?

for such usage i would recommend qemu. Virtualbox is for production use 
with common OSes, and is very ineffective in batch usage and inflexible, 
but fast. qemu is  slow but you can have anything. including precise 
definition of your virtual hardware

> such (that way I can check the "physical" drive and not by indirect
> query)?
just use "raw" format.